Markets fall, UK stocks plunge on election announcement

Markets fell on Tuesday.

The S&P 500 fell 0.3 percent, the STOXX Europe 600 fell 1.1 percent and the MSCI Asia Pacific Index fell 0.5 percent.

Tepid corporate earnings weighed on stocks in the US while a surprise announcement of an early UK general election pulled the FTSE 100 down 2.5 percent.

“The market is very fragile,” said Nicholas Teo, a trading strategist at KGI Securities in Singapore. “The strategy seems to be that investors are selling when the market is up.”