NEW YORK — Investors’ growing anxiety about China’s attempts to slow its economy and disappointing reports in the U.S. led to another selloff in stocks Wednesday.
The Dow Jones industrial average fell 122 points from a 15-month high but ended well off its lows for the day. Demand for havens such as government debt rose, pushing yields lower in the Treasury market.
The concern in the markets is that China’s drive to clamp down on bank lending could endanger a global economic recovery. That helped send the dollar higher against other currencies and pushed commodity prices lower, which hurt the stocks of energy and materials companies.
Investors have been shuttling between heavy buying and selling in recent sessions as they try to determine where the market is headed. The Dow also fell 101 points Friday on concerns about earnings reports but then jumped 116 Tuesday as health care stocks led the market higher.
The market could get a lift today from better-than-expected results at online auction company eBay and Starbucks. Both companies reported higher profits after the close of regular trading.
The Dow fell 122.28, or 1.1 percent, to 10,603.15, its biggest point loss since Dec. 17 and its biggest percentage drop since Dec. 31. It had been down as much as 208 points.
The broader S&P 500 index fell 12.19, or 1.1 percent, to 1,138.04, and the Nasdaq composite fell 29.15, or 1.3 percent, to 2,291.25.
The latest slide came after a top Chinese banking regulator said the country would step up its monitoring of banks to prevent speculative bubbles in areas such as real estate. Last week, China took steps to restrict runaway lending, which also sent stocks lower.
IBM led the Dow lower. The company reported late Tuesday that its earnings rose 9 percent from a year earlier, while sales rose less than 1 percent. The company’s forecast was seen as cautious.
“We might see profitability out of companies this season, but we’re not really seeing revenue growth,” said Dan Cook, senior market analyst at IG Markets in Chicago.
Cook said questions about the stability of the market are apt to rise as Feb. 1 nears. That is when the Federal Reserve plans to halt some of the emergency-lending programs it set up to help revive the economy.
