NEW YORK — Another wave of selling hit stocks Wednesday in response to growing fears that Europe has no quick fix for its debt crisis.
The Dow Jones industrial average fell 67 points after having been down as much as 186. It was the Dow’s ninth drop in 12 days.
The extent of investors’ worries became clear after the euro bounced off a four-year low but stocks still fell.
The euro has been driving stock trading for weeks.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 index, widely considered one of the best measures of how the stock market is doing, neared a 10 percent drop from the 2010 trading high it reached last month.
That would mark the first time the market has had a correction since it bounced off a 12-year low in March last year. Most analysts say a correction is a drop of at least 10 percent.
The latest worry came from Germany, where regulators banned what’s called naked short selling. That occurs when traders bet against investments they don’t hold. The rule covers European government bonds, credit-default swaps and the shares of several financial companies.
The sudden announcement late Tuesday from Germany’s financial regulator was seen in the markets as another example of disarray in Europe’s financial system.
Analysts said the hasty move only deepened the uncertainty about what steps governments might take next in hopes of containing the selling. Major European stock markets tumbled nearly 3 percent.
Maury Fertig, chief investment officer at Relative Value Partners in Northbrook, Ill., said memories of the market’s crash in late 2008 and early 2009 are still raw and that traders don’t want to be caught when stocks start to slide.
“It’s shoot first, ask questions later,” Fertig said. “The freshness of the pain of 2008 is still really stuck in investors’ minds.”
The Dow fell 66.58, or 0.6 percent, to 10,444.37 after dropping 115 Tuesday.
The S&P 500 index fell 5.75, or 0.5 percent, to 1,115.05. The Nasdaq composite index fell 18.89, or 0.8 percent, to 2,298.37.
