U.S. stocks posted their biggest daily drops in almost two years on Wednesday amid fears of soaring inflation and warnings of a recession.

In the New York market, the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged three-point-57 percent to finish at 31-thousand-490-point-07.

The benchmark S&P 500 tumbled over four percent to end at three-thousand-923-point-68. The drop marks the largest daily decline since June 2020 in the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite shed four-point-seven percent to finish at eleven-thousand-418-point-15.

The sharp retreat came after large-scale distributors such as Walmart and Target trimmed their profit forecasts due to a surge in costs.