*By Kristen Lee*
U.S. stocks accelerated losses at the end of the day Wednesday, with the Dow dropping 600 points and the Nasdaq on pace for its biggest monthly drop in a decade.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed the day down 608 points, the S&P lost more than 3 percent, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq lost nearly 4.5 percent.
The sell-off was driven in part by a Commerce Department report that home sales plunged 5.5 percent in September, which rattled investors who expected only a slight decline.
Tech stocks especially weighed on markets. Netflix ($NFLX) and chipmaker Nvidia ($NVDA) were both down nearly 10 percent, Facebook ($FB), down nearly 6 percent, and Google parent Alphabet ($GOOGL), down more than 5 percent.
New York Attorney General Letitia James announced a lawsuit against PepsiCo Inc. on Wednesday, accusing the soda-and-snack food giant of polluting the environment and endangering public health after its single-use plastics were found along the Buffalo River.
Voting on a tentative contract agreement between General Motors and the United Auto Workers union that ended a six-week strike against the company appears too close to call after the latest tallies at several GM factories were announced Wednesday.
