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Speculation for the swell in volume and plunge in futures included the news of the arrest of the CFO of the Chinese telecom company Huawei. Traders also speculated that the selling could be attributed to a large fund or funds liquidating a position.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged by almost 500 points Thursday morning, the first day of trading after U.S. authorities secured the arrest of a Chinese technology company executive, fueling fears that the trade war with China is heating up. News broke late Wednesday that Canadian law enforcement had arrested Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies, a major Chinese tech firm that has been linked to the Chinese military. U.S. officials have requested her extradition, citing a suspected sanctions violation.

Facebook on Thursday posted the largest one-day loss in market value by any company in U.S. stock market history after releasing a disastrous quarterly report. The social media giant's market capitalization plummeted by $119 billion to $510 billion as its stock price plummeted by 19 percent. At Wednesday's close, Facebook's market cap had totaled nearly $630 billion, according to FactSet. No company in the history of the U.S. stock market has ever lost $100 billion in market value in just one day, but two came close. On Sept. 22, 2000, Intel shed $90.74 billion in market value as the dot-com...