Minutes after Wall Street's opening bell, the S&P 500 erased 7% to trigger the level-one circuit breaker. Trading is now halted for 15 minutes.

In case the S&P 500 falls 13% below Friday's closing level, the level-two circuit breaker will be triggered for another stoppage of trading for 15 minutes. The level-three circuit breaker will come into effect if the index is down 20% and trading will be suspended for the remaining of the day in case that occurs.

Fed's policy action fails to kickstart a recovery

During the early trading hours of the Asian session on Monday, the Federal Reserve announced that it lowered its policy rate by 100 basis points to 0-0.25% range in this month's second emergency response to coronavirus. Additionally, the Fed has launched a $700 billion quantitative easing program to inject liquidity into markets.

Regarding the details of the QE program, "the Fed will buy at least USD 500 billion of Treasury securities and at least USD 200 billion of agency mortgage-backed securities,” analysts at Nordea noted.