Near noon, the Dow was down 230 points, the S&P 500 was down 21 points, and the Nasdaq was off 27 points.

Oil was making new lows on Friday, with West Texas Intermediate crude futures falling below $58 a barrel after piercing $60 for the first time on Thursday.

Friday's drop in oil prices comes after the International Energy Agency cut its oil-demand forecast for the fourth time in five months.

Brent crude oil, the international benchmark, was also dropping sharply on Friday, falling below $62 a barrel.

And while oil prices have dropped more than 40% in just about six months, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said at the Dealbook conference on Thursday that after returning to New York from a trip in the Middle East, he is more bearish than ever on oil prices.

Amid the decline in oil prices, long-date US Treasury bonds were staging a huge rally on Friday, with the yield on 10-year bonds falling below 2.1% and 30-year bond yields falling to as low as 2.76%, the lowest in about two years.

We also got two pieces of economic data on Friday. The producer price index showed that prices fell 0.2% in November, more than the 0.1% decline that was expected by economists.