Photo: AFP

Wall Street stocks opened sharply lower on Tuesday, extending their slump on weakness in technology and retailer shares and plunging major indices back into the red for 2018.

About a minutes into trading, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 1.8 percent at 24,569.45, or about 150 points below its year-end level last December.

The broad-based S&P 500 dropped 1.5 percent to 2,650.24, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index plunged 2.2 percent to 6,873.93.