Wall Street tumbles on BOJ's disappointing policy decisions

U.S. stocks slid in choppy trading Tuesday, as the Bank of Japan disappointed investors for failing to announce any measures to ease market turbulence. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 116.57 points, or 0.76 percent, to 15,122.02 points. The Standard & Poor's 500-stock Index lost 16.68 points, or 1.02 percent, to 1,626.13 points. The Nasdaq Composite Index shed 36.82 points, or 1.06 percent, to 3, 436.95 points. The main stock indices opened lower on Tuesday, on the heels of a selloff in stock markets around the world. The Japanese benchmark Nikkei 225 fell 1.45 percent in the day as the Bank of Japan kept interest rates unchanged and didn't take additional steps to address bond volatility. European stocks also closed in the red territory across the board on Tuesday as Germany's constitutional court started a two- day hearing on the legality of the European Central Bank's assets purchasing program. Emerging markets continued to see selling of stocks, bonds and currencies due to concerns over the U.S. Federal Reserve's possible tapering of its bond purchases. The U.S. equity market posted a seesaw trading day Tuesday amid the volatility in bond yields and worries over prospects of the Fed's quantitative easing policy. The market is keeping a close eye on the Fed's upcoming monetary policy meeting scheduled for next week. On the economic front, the U.S. wholesale inventories, a key element in gross domestic product changes, advanced 0.2 percent in April, which was consistent with market expectations, according to the Commerce Department. Meanwhile, wholesale sales rose 0.5 percent in the same month, beating investors' forecasts. Besides, U.S. small-business owner confidence rose for the second consecutive month, according to the National Federation of Independent Business' Index of Small Business Optimism, which went up to a final reading of 94.4 in May. In corporate news, shares of Dole Food Co. Inc. soared 22.16 percent to 12.46 U.S. dollars apiece, after the company's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer David H. Murdock, who just had his 90- year-old birthday, offered to take the company private for approximately 1.07 billion dollars. On other markets, oil prices extended losses Tuesday as Bank of Japan left the stimulus program unchanged. Meanwhile, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries added more pressure on oil prices when it said in its monthly market report that its members increased production by 106,000 barrels daily to 30.57 million a day last month, while slightly revising down its forecast for global oil demand in 2013. Light, sweet crude for July delivery lost 39 cents, or 0.4 percent, to settle at 95.38 dollars a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent for July delivery went down 99 cents, or 0.95 percent, to close at 102.96 dollars a barrel. The U.S. dollar retreated against most major currencies on Tuesday and slipped sharply against the yen as the Bank of Japan kept monetary policy steady. The dollar plunged more than 3 percent against the yen in the session. The Australian dollar, the only currency that fell against the U.S. dollar among the latter's six major trading currencies, dropped to the lowest in three years versus the U.S. dollar after data showed home-loan approvals grew at the slowest pace in three months. In late New York trading, the euro rose to 1.3307 dollars from 1.3262 dollars of the previous session and the British pound climbed to 1.5641 dollars from 1.5584 dollars. The Australian dollar slipped to 0.9443 dollars from 0.9475 dollars. The dollar bought 96.14 Japanese yen, lower than 98.71 yen of the previous session.