The stock market opened Thursday with steep losses in the wake of the Federal Reserve’s decision to hike interest rates at the fastest pace in nearly 30 years.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down nearly 800 points, a decline of 2.6 percent, and fell below 30,000 points shortly after the market opened.

The Nasdaq composite plunged 4.1 percent in the same time and the S&P 500 index was down 3.3 percent. All three major indexes are more than 20 percent below their most recent yearly highs, which is the formal threshold for a bear market.

The market’s steep Thursday selloff came a day after the Fed announced it would hike its baseline interest rate range by 0.75 percentage points for the first time since 1994. While Fed leaders signaled for months that they’d hike rates only by 0.5 percentage points in June, an alarming May surge in inflation and rising consumer expectations of inflation to come pushed the bank to move quicker.... Read More: The Hill