Facebook plunge leads Wall Street sell-off

Losses in tech companies, including Facebook, led Wall Street in the red on Monday.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 90.8 points, or 0.36 percent, to 24,855.71.

The Dow Jones industrial average and the Standard & Poor's 500 index were both down almost 1.5 percent, while the tech-heavy NASDAQ was off more than 2 percent.

The Dow Jones industrial average lost 174 points, or 0.7 percent, to 24,772.

Facebook shares tumbled 6.8 percent as Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg faced calls from both US and European lawmakers to explain how a consultancy that worked on President Donald Trump's election campaign gained access to data on 50 million Facebook users. The company is facing new criticism following reports that a data mining firm employed by the Trump campaign improperly kept data on tens of millions of users.

Bond prices rose. The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 2.83 percent.

The S&P 500 fell 17 points, or 0.6 percent, to 2,734.

Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Alphabet - members of the so-called FAANG group of stocks, along with Facebook - were down between 1.7 percent and 7.2 percent. The S&P's tech sector fell 2.9%.

Asian market shares fell, following the reaction in US markets.

The Federal Reserve's policy meeting, over Tuesday and Wednesday, is also in focus as investors brace for a near-certain interest rate hike this week. The CBOE Volatility index touched a high of 21.87 in one of its sharpest gains since the market sell-off in February.

Declining issues outnumbered advancers on the NYSE for a 4.93-to-1 ratio, and for a 3.53-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq.

The stock was set for its worst day since September 2012 and was down about 13 percent from its all-time high hit on February 1, entering what is called correction territory.