NEW YORK (AP) — The biggest evidence yet that investors are concerned about keeping their money safe: they're selling stocks of small companies.

Those stocks usually fall much more than large-company stocks if the economy slows down or the stock market turns volatile. With the deadline for a debt deal less than a week away, the stocks that investors consider to be the riskiest are falling the most.

The Russell 2000 index, which tracks smaller U.S. companies, fell 2 percent Wednesday, far more than both the Dow Jones industrial average and the Standard & Poor's 500 index.

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