While the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA,
Wednesday saw its biggest one-day skid since around October, market internals suggest investors on the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq are buying rather than selling stock. The Arms Index Arms Index, a volume-weighted latitude measure, fell to 0.234, while many on Wall Street are seeing falls below 0.500, indicating panic buying. The Weapons Index is calculated by dividing the ratio between the number of emerging stocks and falling stocks by the ratio between the volume of emerging stocks and the diminishing volume, and the Weapons Index often falls below 1,000 as buyers rush towards ascending stocks. The Nasdaq Arms Index was 0.287. Meanwhile, the Nasdaq Composite COMP,
was down 1% at 13,484, the S&P 500 index SPX,
was down 1.3% at 3,798, lost its grip on a psychological key level at 3,800, and the Dow traded 1.4% lower at 30,525. The downward moves in stocks are because investors found few reasons to buy stocks, while the focus has been on retail investors who are heavily short in stocks such as GameStop GME,
Later in the day, investors are also awaiting a policy update from the Federal Reserve at 2 p.m. ET, and Jerome Powell will be holding a press conference at 2:30 p.m.