By Peter Nurse and Liz Moyer
Investing.com -- U.S. stocks closed down on Thursday, with investors digesting a sharp drop in oil prices and studying the release of key inflation and employment data on the last trading day of the month and quarter.
At 4:40 PM ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 550 points, or 1.6%, while the S&P 500 fell 1.6% and the NASDAQ Composite was down 1.5%.
The main Wall Street indices weakened Wednesday, weighed by dashed hopes of a major breakthrough in Ukraine/Russia peace talks, with both the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average and the broad-based S&P 500 ending four-day winning streaks.
March has been a positive month for the major averages, however, as far as the year to date is concerned, the Dow and S&P 500 are both down and had their worst quarter in two years.
Oil prices slumped Thursday following reports that the U.S. will conduct a massive release of crude from emergency reserves in order to tackle the sharp rise in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The Biden administration announced the total release from the country’s strategic petroleum reserve of as much as 180 million barrels over the course of several months.
This news has overshadowed a meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and their allies, a group known as OPEC+, which stuck to an existing deal of increasing oil production by around 400,000 barrels per day through May.
By 4:42 PM ET, U.S. crude futures traded 6.5% lower at $100 a barrel, while the Brent contract fell 5.6% to $105.
Thursday also saw the release of weekly jobless claims following on from Wednesday’s strong private jobs data, and ahead of Friday’s official report on employment for March. Last week, 202,000 people filed initial claims, slightly higher than the 197,000 expected.
Additionally, gold futures rose 0.2% to $1,936/oz.
This story was originally published at 7 AM ET and updated.