It's easy to blame the ongoing tit-for-tat trade war between US and China for the market malaise - yes, true it impacts the Dow futures and that affected sentiment. But the Dow has shown it can survive this episode (which I am not calling a crisis) and all this is heading towards to a critical negotiation.
I think the market sentiment is already fragile and it is an excuse to sell down - the retracement to remove remaining overvaluation and exuberance in sp is still progressing especially across the lower end of town stocks. Stocks trading under themes of crypto, blockchain & AI are unwinding spectacularly - FFG (Fatfish-crypto play) down 17% today , YOJ (Yojie- blockchain logistics) down 18% over last 2 weeks, FGO (AI play) down 15% the last 3 sessions. It is not uncommon for 'unproven' small caps to lose 70-80% of their value from their all time high in a depressed market (similar like what happened to Rent.com per my previous post) and then float sideways for an extended period of time- some have moved down faster than others, those that haven't will likely catch up as the downdraft continues.
