Wall Street closes with heavy losses weighed by Supreme Court’s sales tax ruling

• Online retailers fall sharply on Thursday.
• Dow Jones Industrial Average ends the eighth straight session in the red.
• Trade worries continue to drag industrial sector lower.

Major equity indexes in the United States started the day slightly lower and extended their losses amid revived concerns over trade conflict and the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to allow states to collect sales taxes from online retailers.

The online retail store Amazon lost more than 1% on the day after the Supreme Court overturned a ruling from 1992 exempted online retailers from paying sales tax if they didn’t have a physical presence in the state. Another widely used e-commerce platform eBay, meanwhile, dropped more than 3%.

After closing the previous day slightly lower, the CBOE Volatility Index, Wall Street’s fear gauge, rose nearly 15% on Thursday.  Caterpillar and Boeing, two industrial giants that have been hit the hardest by the trade conflict between the United States and China, dropped 2.5% and 1.% respectively.  “You have seen the tug of war as far as investors are concerned with the trading ranges since the announcement, it would appear it is still to be determined the absolute level of ramifications,” Eric Wiegand, senior portfolio manager at U.S. Bank Private Wealth Management in New York, told Reuters.

Meanwhile, the S&P 500 Energy Index (SPNY), lost nearly 2% as crude oil prices remained under pressure on the expectations of OPEC announcing a supply hike in Vienna on Friday.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 196.34 points, or 0.8%,  to 24,461.46, the S&P 500 fell 17.66 points, or 0.64%, to 2,749.66 and the Nasdaq Composite lost 68.57 points, or 0.88%, to 7,712.95.