US STOCKS-Wall St extends recent selloff, puts Dow on course to erase 'Trump-bump'

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* S&P 500 extends losses after trading halt
* Boeing slumps after call for $60 bln lifeline
* Indexes down: Dow 7.9%, S&P 500 7.3%, Nasdaq 6.5%

(Updates to late afternoon)
By Caroline Valetkevitch
NEW YORK, March 18 (Reuters) - The selloff in U.S. stocks
deepened on Wednesday and the Dow was set to erase the last of
its gains since U.S. President Donald Trump's 2017 inauguration,
as the coronavirus pandemic threatened to bring U.S. economic
activity to a halt.
The benchmark S&P 500 index was last down 7.3% after
triggering a 15-minute trading cutout at a 7% decline, extending
the recent plunge that ended Wall Street's longest-ever bull
run. The S&P 500 is now down more than 30% since its Feb. 19
record closing high.
With airports and hotels emptying and airlines asking staff
to take unpaid leave to stem losses, the S&P 1500 airlines index
.SPCOMAIR sank more than 20%. Shares in Hilton HLT.N ,
Marriott MAR.O and Hyatt H.N hotels fell roughly by 20% to
30%.
"This market went from a position of where we were fearless
back at the beginning of February to some days like today where
you feel hopeless about what's going on in the market," said
Wayne Wicker, chief investment officer of Vantagepoint
Investment Advisers.
Trump's request for Congress to approve $500 billion in cash
payments to taxpayers along with $50 billion in loans for
airlines did little to stem the rout.
Shares in Boeing Co BA.N , for long a symbol of U.S. tech
and industrial power, tumbled and were now down more than 60%
since the start of the year. The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI fell 1,682.15
points, or 7.92%, to 19,555.23, the S&P 500 .SPX lost 185.33
points, or 7.33%, to 2,343.86 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC
dropped 476.87 points, or 6.5%, to 6,857.91.
Wall Street's main indexes bounced on Tuesday from a massive
selloff a day earlier, as the Trump administration pressed for a
$1 trillion stimulus package and the Federal Reserve relaunched
a plan to buy short-term corporate debt.
But dramatic stimulus measures have only provided
short-lived bounces in equities with investors factoring in a
global recession and worrying about the duration of the damage
extending into the summer.
"There are two things the market is awaiting - a stimulus
and it needs to be bigger than a trillion dollars for sure to
help all the workers who are going to be out of work for a month
or two," said Thomas Hayes, managing member at Great Hill
Capital LLC in New York.
"And a little hope in color on some drug approvals for
treatment."
Worries about mass debt defaults or writedowns pressured
U.S. lenders, sending the S&P 500 banking subsector .SPXBK
down sharply.
The S&P 500 has fallen by around a third, or around $7
trillion in value, since scaling record highs in mid-February.
Its collapse into a bear market, among the fastest in history,
has spurred some calls for a pause in trading.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin late on Tuesday suggested
shortening of trading hours at some point, but that drew
opposition from several leading investors and exchange managers,
who said it would harm the market's credibility. Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by a
16.50-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 10.13-to-1 ratio favored
decliners.
The S&P 500 posted 5 new 52-week highs and 292 new lows; the
Nasdaq Composite recorded 9 new highs and 1,095 new lows.