The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 391.00 points, or 1.49 per cent, to 25,896.44 on Monday. The S&P 500 decreased 35.96 points, or 1.23 per cent, to 2,882.70. The Nasdaq Composite Index dropped 95.73 points, or 1.20 per cent, to 7,863.41, Xinhua reported.
All of the 11 primary S&P 500 sectors traded lower around market close, with the financials sector down over 1.9 per cent, leading the losers.
Shares of Occidental Petroleum fell over 4.5 per cent, after Evercore rated the US energy giant "in-line," saying that the company's acquisition of Anadarko Petroleum caused the valuation of Occidental Petroleum to have declined.
The yields of both long-term and short-term US treasury bills plunged on Monday, with the benchmark 10-year bill's yield sliding to a bit over 1.64 per cent after market close. That widened its spread with the 3-month note's yield, which stood at nearly 1.99 per cent, thus forming an inverted curve and stoking fears of a potential recession.
The Cboe Volatility index, widely considered the best fear gauge in the stock market, increased 17.36 per cent to 21.09 on Monday.
Goldman Sachs also cut back its growth forecast for the fourth quarter by 20 basis points to 1.8 per cent, as the leading investment bank raised its "estimate of the growth impact of the trade war," said Jan Hatzius, a chief economist of the bank, in a note on Sunday.
"The drivers of this modest change are that we now include an estimate of the sentiment and uncertainty effects and that financial markets have responded notably to recent trade news," Hatzius noted.
( With inputs from IANS )