DOW DOWN 280
REUTERS/Andres Stapff Yee-haw. Stocks are getting crushed.
On Wednesday, oil was crashing again and US stocks were taking their lead from the commodity.
Near 3:00 pm ET, the Dow was down 280 points, the S&P 500 was down 35 points, and the Nasdaq was down 83 points.
All of the indexes were down more than 1.5%, with the Nasdaq's 1.75% drop leading losses.
On Wednesday oil was dropping again, falling to new lows as Brent crude broke $65 and WTI crude fell below $61 for the first time since 2009.
The drop in oil came after a couple bits of negative news in the space, led by a new report from OPEC predicting that demand for oil from the 12-member cartel would be lower than expected next year.
Speaking with reporters on Wednesday, Saudi Minister of Petroleum Ali Al-Naimi said, "Why should I cut production? You know what a market does for any commodity. It goes up and down and up and down."
And as Business Insider's Shane Ferro noted, this is a decidedly different tune from the most powerful OPEC member, as the OPEC was originally designed exactly to keep this market under control.
Also on Wednesday, the US Energy Information Administration released its latest status report which showed that weekly crude stocks were 1.45 million barrels against expectations for a drawdown of 2.2 million.
Much of the drop in oil has been attributed to a supply glut, and an unexpected inventory build was not met kindly by the market on Wednesday.
The economic-data front was quiet, with just the Treasury's latest monthly budget statement showing that the budget deficit in November came in at $56.8 billion, less than the $72.5 billion that was expected and down from $135.2 billion a year ago.
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