Tech stocks drag down markets

Technology stocks are leading a slump on Wall Street, led by big drops in Apple and Facebook. The Dow briefly sank 500 points, or nearly 2 percent.

Apple lost 3.7 percent in midday trading Monday and Facebook gave up 5.2 percent. Chipmaker Nvidia dropped another 9.3 percent to $149.06 after it said last week that it had a large number of unsold chips because of a big drop in mining of cryptocurrencies.

Nissan’s U.S.-listed shares slumped 5.1 percent after the carmaker’s chairman, Carlos Ghosn, was arrested after allegedly under-reporting his income.

The parent company of California utility Pacific Gas & Electric fell again after it disclosed that it had a power line failure near the start of a deadly wildfire the morning the fire began. The Mercury News of San Jose reported Saturday that the company said in a filing that it had an outage at 6:45 a.m. on Nov. 8 in Concow. Authorities say 76 people have been confirmed dead in the Camp Fire.

PG&E stock fell 6.4 percent to $22.85. The stock has lost half its value since Nov. 8 in spite of a big rally on Friday.

Clashes between China and the U.S. at a Pacific Rim summit over the weekend left investors feeling pessimistic about the prospects for a deal that would end the trade tensions between the world’s two largest economies.

The U.S. has imposed a 10 percent tariff on $200 billion of Chinese goods, and that tariff is set to rise to 25 percent on Jan. 1. Another $50 billion of Chinese goods already is subject to 25 percent duties. Beijing has responded with penalty duties on $110 billion of American goods.

Talks continue ahead of a meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and President Donald Trump planned for the G-20 summit later this month.

The S&P 500 index fell nearly 2 percent, to 2,682. The Nasdaq composite lost more than 3 percent, dropping to 7,031.

Bond price didn’t move much. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note held steady at 3.07 percent.