The election behind them, U.S. investors dumped stocks Wednesday and turned their focus to a world of problems — economically harmful tax increases and spending cuts at home and a deepening recession in Europe.

The Dow Jones industrial average plunged as much as 245 points in the first hour of trading, and the Standard & Poor's 500 index fell as much as 27, or 1.6 percent. Energy companies and bank stocks took big losses.

Stocks seen as benefiting from President Barack Obama's decisive re-election rose. They included hospitals, free of the threat that a President Mitt Romney would have sought to roll back Obama's health care law, and renewable-energy companies.