Panic-like behavior was starting to set in on Wall Street on Thursday, at least from a technical perspective, as the Dow industrials shed all of the previous day’s gain, and then some.

Trading in New York Stock Exchange-listed stocks at midday Thursday exhibited panic-like-selling action as bullish investors suffered a powerful reversal of fortune that appeared to be gathering steam in the wake of the Fed’s early-May policy meeting, adding to a bruising stretch for buyers, sparked by concerns about rates.

The NYSE Arms Index, a volume-weighted breadth measure that tracks the ratio of advancing stock to declining stocks over the ratio of advancing volume over declining volume, was showing a reading of 2.588 for NYSE-listed shares. Many technicians say a rise to at least 2.000 suggests panic-like selling behavior.

The reading comes as the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -3.03%  was off 3.1%, or over 1,050 points, at 33,027, looking at its sharpest one-day fall since 2020; the S&P 500 index SPX, -3.44%  was off 3.4% at around 4,150; and the Nasdaq Composite Index COMP, -4.76%  was trading 4.7% lower at 12,365.

this happend on May 5th