NEW YORK — Stocks suffered their biggest losses in three months Tuesday, the first hiccup in a strong and steady rally to start the year. Wall Street worried about the global economy and waited while Greece pressured the last investors to sign on for its bailout.
The Dow Jones industrial average fell more than 200 points, giving up more than a quarter of its 745-point advance since Jan. 1, the best start to a year in the U.S. market since 1998.
The sell-off, which spread west from Europe, also interrupted a period of unusual calm on Wall Street. Before Tuesday, the Dow had not fallen 100 points or more for 45 straight trading sessions, the longest streak since 2006.
The decline of 203.66 points was the worst for the Dow since Nov. 23 and left the average at 12,759.15. It was only last week that the Dow closed above 13,000 for the first time since May 2008, four months before the worst of the financial crisis.
“When things go straight up and don’t ever correct or have some sort of normal pullback, as an investor, that makes me nervous,” said Ed Hyland, a global investment specialist with J.P. Morgan Private Bank.
The gradual rally had been powered by optimism about the U.S. economic recovery. But investors realized that Greece’s debt problems, Europe’s economic problems and Israel’s Iran problems were still very much their problems too.
Stocks fell sharply from the opening bell and never mounted a serious comeback. The Dow was down as much as 227 points. All but one of the 30 stocks in the average finished the day lower. Intel managed a gain of 7 cents.
All 10 industry groups in the Standard & Poor’s 500 declined. Bank stocks led the declines, followed by industrial and materials companies.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 fell 20.97 points, its worst decline since Dec. 8, to 1,343.36. The S&P had not declined 1 percent or more for 45 straight trading days, also the longest streak since 2006. That year, the S&P put together 94 in a row.
The Nasdaq composite dropped 40.16 points to 2,910.32. The Nasdaq last week broke through 3,000 for the first time since December 2000, during the collapse in dot-com stocks.
Bill Stone, chief investment strategist for PNC Wealth Management, called Tuesday’s decline “fairly rational,” considering how much the market has climbed and the economic worries in Greece and the rest of Europe.
“You need the pullback to give people opportunities to want to get involved again,” Stone said.
The price of oil slipped $2.02 to $104.70 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
The price of gold fell $31.80 an ounce, or 2.1 percent, to $1,672.10 an ounce. Silver, platinum and copper all fell more than 2 percent because of concerns about Europe and weaker economic demand in China.
“Global growth fears now are hitting home, and we’re seeing selling across the board,” said Matt Zeman, a market analyst for Kingsview Financial.
