Plunging Oil Prices Bad News for Stock Market

The plunge in oil prices is good news for drivers but not for the stock market, which kicked off the week in free fall.

The Dow Jones dropped more than 300 points Monday. On Tuesday, Asian markets are down, too, falling for a second day in a row.

With oil prices hitting a six-year low at less than $50 a barrel, some traders are worried that's an indication of a weakening world economy.

In Texas, a state driven largely by the oil industry, there are some concerns about how the falling trend of oil prices could impact the local economy.

"We are going to see job losses in 2015," Patick Jankowski, from the Greater Houston Partnership, said. "They're not going to be anywhere near what we saw in the Great Recession or what we saw in 1986, but we will see job losses this year."

Still, the low prices are good for refining along the Houston Ship Channel and Gulf Coast.