NEW YORK — Grim economic news from Europe and airstrikes in Syria rattled global stocks Tuesday.
Most of the damage was felt in European markets, which fell sharply after a closely watched gauge of business activity for the region fell to a nine-month low.
The disappointing news about Europe’s economy also weighed down Wall Street. The Dow Jones industrial average opened lower and finished the day with its second triple-digit loss in a row.
Investors have been dealing with meager economic growth in Europe for months. The eurozone economy has been flat or barely growing since April, hobbled by the lingering effects of a debt crisis, uncertainty over a conflict in Ukraine and a lack of confidence among European consumers, businesses and banks.
“It has a very feeble recovery going on that is vulnerable to even the slightest external shock,” said Jacob Kirkegaard, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
The European Central Bank has announced a series of measures to jolt the economy, cutting interest and pumping money into the financial system by buying bonds backed by assets such as auto and credit-card loans. But it has yet to go as far as the U.S. Federal Reserve did, buying government bonds in an effort to push long-term interest rates lower.
Carl Weinberg, chief economist at High Frequency Economics, is not optimistic: “Recovery will take years.”
European market indexes sank after the economic news. Germany’s DAX fell 1.6 percent, France’s CAC 40 fell 1.9 percent and the U.K.’s FTSE 100 lost 1 percent.
In the U.S., the Dow slid 116.81 points, or 0.7 percent, to 17,055.87. The S&P 500 index lost 11.52 points, or 0.6 percent, to 1,982.77 and the Nasdaq composite fell 19 points, or 0.4 percent, to 4,508.69.
The Dow’s triple-digit fall on Tuesday follows a 107-point stumble from the day before. The blue-chip index hasn’t posted two losses of 100 or more points since June.