Stocks Sink; Margin Fears Take Center Stage

After stabilizing over the past few sessions, stocks are weaker across the board Thursday with selling accelerating in afternoon trade. Again, the sell-off is hitting high-flying biotech, Internet, and software names the hardest.

Heading into the 2 o'clock hour, the Dow is down 178 points, the S&P 500 is down 27 points and the Nasdaq is down 116. The S&P 500 is now down nearly 3% from its high. The NASDAQ is down nearly 7% from its high.

The selling appears to be a continuation of the weakness first witnessed in high-growth, high-multiple names that trickled over into the broader market. Now worries about margin debt appear to be taking center stage. Yesterday, the New York Post highlighted that Ken Griffin's Citadel hedge fund has leverage of nearly 9x its investment capital. Today, bond king Jeff Gundlach warned "Watch how hard stocks roll over once margin debt crests for the cycle."

Anyone that has been in the market longer than the current bull run knows, margin cuts both ways.

Looking at sectors, biotech is leading the way lower with a 5.8% slide as represented by the iShares Nasdaq Biotechnology (NYSE: IBB). Meanwhile, the Global X Social Media Index ETF (NYSE: SOCL) is down 3.6%.

Individual names making big moves include: Intercept Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: ICPT) (-10.7%) FireEye, Inc. (NASDAQ: FEYE) (-10.9%), Workday, Inc. (NYSE: WDAY) (-9.4%), Yelp (NYSE: YELP) (-7%), Gilead Sciences (NASDAQ: GILD) (-6.7%), TripAdvisors (NASDAQ: TRIP) (-5.4%), Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) (-4.8%), Biogen Idec Inc. (NASDAQ: BIIB) (-4.8%), Tesla Motors, Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA) (-4.5%), Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) (-4.4%), Biogen Idec Inc. (NASDAQ: BIIB) (-4.3%), The Priceline Group (Nasdaq: PCLN) (-3.9%), Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) (-3.7%), Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) (-3.6%), Celgene (NASDAQ: CELG) (-4.5%), Twitter (NYSE: TWTR) (-2.2%).

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