U.S. stocks fell on Tuesday, with the S&P 500 marking its longest losing streak in more than a year.

Major U.S. stock indexes have had their worst start to a year since the financial crisis year of 2008. The declines have been fueled by the slide in crude-oil prices that has raised investor worries about global economic growth. European shares are also down for the year, as analysts fret about Greece’s political future ahead of general elections later this month.

Investors came into 2015 ready for more gains in U.S. stocks. But instead, they have been playing defense, driving up prices of safe-haven investments like Treasury bonds. On Tuesday, that dash for safety sent the yield on the 10-year note briefly below 1.9% and supported gains in shares of utilities and telecommunications companies.

“[Investors] are rotating into more defensive sectors and…minimizing their bets” on riskier investments, said Darren Wolfberg, head of U.S. cash equity trading at BNP Paribas.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 130.01 points, or 0.74%, to 17371.64. The S&P 500 fell 17.97 points, or 0.9%, to 2002.61. That was the fifth-straight decline for the index, the most consecutive losses since December 2013. The Nasdaq Composite lost 59.84 points, or 1.29%, to 4592.74.