Wall Street Is Finishing the Worst Quarter for Stocks in Four Years

It was supposed to be a banner year for Wall Street. Now investors are just hoping to avoid a global recession triggered by a historic run-up in energy prices.

U.S. stocks are set to deliver their worst quarter in nearly four years. The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite lurched into correction territory on March 26, meaning it had fallen 10% below its recent high. A day later, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (a benchmark for the real economy) joined it.

Flashback to December: Economic growth was accelerating, the Federal Reserve appeared poised to make further interest-rate cuts and markets had moved past the uncertainty created by U.S. disputes with its international trading partners. Together, the trends pointed to the potential for double-digit returns, and investors came into 2026 confident the rally was about to sweep up many of the stocks that sat out the rise of Big Tech, Nvidia and the artificial-intelligence boom.