Wall Street drops for 3rd day

Wall Street drops for 3rd day

Reuters – Specialist Donald Cititinova looks up a price monitors from a trading station on the floor of the New …

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Stocks dropped for a third day in a volatile session on Wednesday as worries about Japan's nuclear crisis escalated, and analysts saw more volatility ahead for the market.

The market extended losses, with all three major indexes briefly down more than 1 percent. A Vienna-based U.N. nuclear watchdog said Japanese officials are worried about the state of a pool holding spent nuclear fuel at a reactor complex damaged by the earthquake and tsunami.

Earlier, Japanese workers withdrew briefly from a stricken nuclear power plant because of surging radiation levels and a helicopter was unable to drop water to cool the most troubled reactor.

"We are so fixated here on Japan, and this intraday volatility is without question here to stay as we are all quickly learning what nuclear power is. You can throw everything else out the window," said Ryan Detrick, senior technical strategist at Schaeffer's Investment Research in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Nikkei dollar-denominated futures were down 4 percent, while the IShares MSCI Japan Index Fund (EWJ.P) slid 3.1 percent at $9.72.

Adding to market worries, forces in Bahrain, a neighbor of top oil exporter Saudi Arabia, launched a crackdown on protesters. The political upheaval sent Brent crude to about $111 a barrel.

The Dow Jones industrial average (.DJI) was down 103.62 points, or 0.87 percent, at 11,751.80. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index (.SPX) was down 9.49 points, or 0.74 percent, at 1,272.38. The Nasdaq Composite Index (.IXIC) was down 21.83 points, or 0.82 percent, at 2,645.50.