{"id":59926,"date":"2026-03-18T16:09:23","date_gmt":"2026-03-18T20:09:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stockmarketwatch.com\/stock-market-news\/dowjonestodaydow-jones-plunges-over-700-points-amid-consumer-sector-sell-off\/59926\/"},"modified":"2026-03-18T16:09:23","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T20:09:23","slug":"dowjonestodaydow-jones-plunges-over-700-points-amid-consumer-sector-sell-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www2.stockmarketwatch.com\/stock-market-news\/dowjonestodaydow-jones-plunges-over-700-points-amid-consumer-sector-sell-off\/59926\/","title":{"rendered":"[DowJonesToday]Dow Jones Plunges Over 700 Points Amid Consumer Sector Sell-Off"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/stockmarketwatch.com\/markets\/dowjones\/today.aspx\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"1\" title=\"Dow Jones Today\">Dow Jones<\/a> Industrial Average (<strong>DJIA<\/strong>) was down <strong>768.11 (-1.63%)<\/strong> points today, Wednesday, March 18th, 2026, closing at <strong>46,225.15<\/strong>. Simultaneously, <strong>Dow Futures (YM=F)<\/strong> was down <strong>833.00 (-1.76%)<\/strong> points. The primary narrative driving this sharp decline was a sudden retreat in consumer-facing sectors, as investors reacted to cooling retail sentiment and potential shifts in long-term interest rate expectations that pressured high-valuation discretionary stocks. This <strong>key driver<\/strong> triggered a broad-based liquidation across retail and staple components, overshadowing minor gains in the energy sector.<\/p>\n<p>The downward pressure was led by the consumer staples and retail segments. Procter &amp; Gamble (<strong>PG<\/strong> (<a href=\"\/stock\/PG\">PG<\/a>)) was the session&#39;s biggest loser, falling <strong>2.94%<\/strong> to <strong>$147.14<\/strong>, while Nike (<strong>NKE<\/strong> (<a href=\"\/stock\/NKE\">NKE<\/a>)) dropped <strong>2.87%<\/strong> to <strong>$53.63<\/strong>. Payment processor Visa (<strong>V<\/strong> (<a href=\"\/stock\/V\">V<\/a>)) also saw a significant decline of <strong>2.85%<\/strong>, and Sherwin-Williams (<strong>SHW<\/strong> (<a href=\"\/stock\/SHW\">SHW<\/a>)) fell <strong>2.71%<\/strong>. Major tech components added to the slide, with Microsoft (<strong>MSFT<\/strong> (<a href=\"\/stock\/MSFT\">MSFT<\/a>)) and Apple (<strong>AAPL<\/strong> (<a href=\"\/stock\/AAPL\">AAPL<\/a>)) both declining by over <strong>1.6%<\/strong>, further weighing on the price-weighted index.<\/p>\n<p>Despite the broad sell-off, the energy and financial sectors provided a small pocket of resilience. Chevron (<strong>CVX<\/strong> (<a href=\"\/stock\/CVX\">CVX<\/a>)) was the top gainer, rising <strong>0.73%<\/strong> to <strong>$199.51<\/strong>, followed by JPMorgan Chase (<strong>JPM<\/strong> (<a href=\"\/stock\/JPM\">JPM<\/a>)) and Goldman Sachs (<strong>GS<\/strong> (<a href=\"\/stock\/GS\">GS<\/a>)) which gained <strong>0.56%<\/strong> and <strong>0.40%<\/strong> respectively. However, these gains were overwhelmed by losses in other heavyweights like McDonald&#39;s (<strong>MCD<\/strong> (<a href=\"\/stock\/MCD\">MCD<\/a>)), which fell <strong>2.60%<\/strong>, and Walmart (<strong>WMT<\/strong> (<a href=\"\/stock\/WMT\">WMT<\/a>)), which dropped <strong>2.32%<\/strong>, signaling a difficult day for the broader market.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) was down 768.11 (-1.63%) points today, Wednesday, March 18th, 2026, closing at 46,225.15. Simultaneously, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":50368,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"rank_math_schema_Article":[],"rank_math_focus_keyword":[],"rank_math_description":[],"financial_data_references":[],"stock_symbols_mentioned":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[17736],"tags":[174,298,1160,3280,3785,4380,7202,17766],"class_list":["post-59926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-snippets-dow-jones","tag-jpm","tag-cvx","tag-nke","tag-djia","tag-pg","tag-stock-market","tag-consumer-staples","tag-march-2026"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.stockmarketwatch.com\/stock-market-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.stockmarketwatch.com\/stock-market-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.stockmarketwatch.com\/stock-market-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.stockmarketwatch.com\/stock-market-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.stockmarketwatch.com\/stock-market-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www2.stockmarketwatch.com\/stock-market-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59926\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.stockmarketwatch.com\/stock-market-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.stockmarketwatch.com\/stock-market-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.stockmarketwatch.com\/stock-market-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.stockmarketwatch.com\/stock-market-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}