A rout in global financial markets deepened Tuesday, sending the Dow Jones Industrial Average down nearly 900 points and heightening the anxiety of investors around the world.

The latest wave of selling marked the blue-chip benchmark’s worst two-day percentage decline in two years. Fear rippled across financial markets, sending the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note to a record low and crude-oil prices tumbling below $50 a barrel.

For much of the past several weeks, money managers have been fixated on one issue: the potential for a growing coronavirus epidemic to hit global economic activity.

Hope that health officials would be able to contain the epidemic, resulting in only a short-term disruption to growth, had helped keep stocks near all-time highs up until just last week. But in the past two days, that optimism has increasingly turned into skepticism—wiping out what S&P Dow Jones Indices estimated amounted to $1.7 trillion from the U.S. stock market.

Shares of companies as varied as banks, consumer-goods companies and restaurants retreated, underscoring investors’ broad fear of a pullback in consumer spending hurting profits. Citigroup slid 4.3%, while Apple fell 3.4% and IHOP parent Dine Brands Global dropped 8.1%.