World stock markets tumbled towards their worst week of the year on Friday and commodities had another bruising day.

At 9:36 a.m. ET (1336 GMT) the Dow Jones industrial average was down 166.69 points, or 0.98 percent, at 16,824.

The Standard and Poor’s 500 Index capped a weekly loss of 5.8 per cent, its worst drop in nearly four years.

The S&P 500 posted its worst daily fall since February 2014 on Thursday night, so traders were hoping for better news from the US August Markit manufacturing PMI later.

Now eight of the 10 sectors are negative for the year.

“The dismal manufacturing figures form China leaves the door open for more devaluing of the yuan“. Its currency, the real, is down 7 percent the past month and more than 30 percent the past two years.

While the leg down from more than $US100 a barrel has been mainly driven by expanding supply, John Kilduff, founding partner of Again Capital, said softer demand from China was now putting further downward pressure on prices.

It would be easy to explain why the stock market is tanking if there were any credible chance that the Fed would be raising interest rates in September.

“An important low appears likely next week from a technical standpoint, although the market may reel for another couple of days before finding its corrective low”, she said.

As the selloff gained momentum, so did investor anxiety.

Corrections have become a rare occurrence on Wall Street.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average had a record setting closing…

A fourth consecutive day of losses on Wall Street brought a more than three percent drop on the major indices.

Kenny said for investors the question now is when does the freefall stop?

After years of upward growth and recovery, this may be so called correction many anticipated.

“Concern over global growth is number one”.

“Commodity markets are telling us this is quite serious”, said Neil Dwane, head of European equities at Allianz Global Investors, which oversees EUR412 billion ($463 billion) of assets.

The fall in oil prices is hurting U.S. energy stocks too. At least not yet. On Wednesday, minutes of the Fed’s latest policy meeting showed officials were divided over when to raise rates, with some citing concerns over China’s economy as a reason to hold back.

BB&T Corp – Finished at $37.60, down 1.00 or 2.59 percent. Gold traded up 0.33% to $1,157 a troy ounce. “But there doesn’t seem to be any signal that the weakness overseas is slipping into the U.S. economy“. “By then we will have a clearer view as to the risk of a China economic “hard landing”, and the degree to which capital markets are prepared to absorb higher US interest rates“. In Europe, the Euro Stoxx 50, which tracks large-cap companies in the eurozone plunged 2.84%.

Drops exceeding 2% have been rare since the financial crisis of 2008-2009. Buoyed by an army of individual investors, many of whom borrowed heavily to speculate on shares, the Shanghai stock market had surged more than 150% in 12 months before heavy selling started in June. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng declined 1.53%, while Japan’s Nikkei fell 2.98%.