S&P 500 and Nasdaq touch bear-market territory in late-Wednesday trade and join the Dow

The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite Index Wednesday afternoon fell below a threshold that would put those benchmarks in bear-market territory if they closes there, threatening to end the longest bull-market in history. The S&P 500 SPX, -4.88% hit a low at 2,707.32 in in the final hour of trade on Wednesday, a close at or below that level would mark a 20% drop, meeting the widely accepted criteria for a bear market. Meanwhile, the The Nasdaq Composite Index COMP, -4.70% briefly traded in a bear market below 7,853.74 and traded at a Wednesday nadir at 7,850.95. The declines for those benchmarks came after the Dow Jones Industrial Average hit a low at 23,328.32, also meeting the criteria for a bear market. On March 9, stock market notched its 11th year in a bull-market uptrend, the longest such streak in history. MarketWatch considers an asset to be in a bear-market only when it closes at least 20% below its recent peak. A decline all for stocks on Wednesday deepened after the World Health Organization declared the outbreak of COVID-19, which was first identified in Wuhan, China in December, a pandemic. The disease has infected more than 121,000 people and claimed more than 4,300 lives world-wide.