Panic-like selling emerges Friday afternoon as stock market’s drop gathers steam in last hour of trade

Trading in New York Stock Exchange-listed stocks on Friday were exhibiting panic-like-selling behavior to end a turbulent week of trading, featuring two days of congressioal testimony from Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and a trove of key economic reports. 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 2.182 for NYSE-listed shares. Many technicians say a rise to at least 2.000 suggests panic-like selling behavior. The reading comes even as the Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA,
-0.86%
was off 0.8% at 34,706, the S&P 500 index
SPX,
-0.76%
was off 0.7% at 4,331 and the Nasdaq Composite Index
COMP,
-0.80%
was trading 0.7% lower at 14,447. Fed Chairman Powell this week again reassured markets that a rise inflation was likely to be temporary, but higher prices may be behind the fall in consumer sentiment. For the week, the S&P 500 was looking at a 0.9% weekly drop, the Dow was on track for a 0.5% weekly slide, while the Nasdaq Composite was set for a 1.8% weekly decline.