Almost One Trillion dollars in value has evaporated….
Interest rates climbing due to attacks on Inflation…..
Worrying about a recession…
Increased virus cases….
Ukraine collateral damage to world markets…
China lockdown hurting supply to consumers of imports…
Hmmmm?
Stocks fell sharply Monday, pushing the S&P 500 to breach the 4,000 level for the first time in more than a year as the market sell-off continued.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 653.67 points to 32,245.70, or 1.99%. The S&P 500 fell 3.2% to settle at 3,991.24, while the Nasdaq Composite lost 4.29% to 11,623.25.
The S&P 500 traded as low as 3,975.48 on the day, dipping below the 4,000 mark to its lowest level since March 2021 and pulling back 17% from a 52-week high as traders struggled to bounce back from last week’s big market swings. All sectors except for consumer staples dipped into the red.
Amid the losses, the benchmark 10-year Treasury note yield hit its highest level since late 2018, trading well above 3%.
“This is significant repricing, this is significant dislocation and this is all being spurred and driven by Federal Reserve policy,” said Jeff Kilburg of Sanctuary Wealth. “The only way I see us finding the bottom in equities short-term, the only way I see markets healing is if the Fed has the ability with the tools in their toolbox to calm down interest rates. The 10-year note needs to go back under 3%.”
….
What’s driving the wild swings? The financial markets are coming to grips with a stunning policy change by the Federal Reserve, writes The Times columnist Jeff Sommer. Markets have become so accustomed to the Fed’s loose monetary policy of the past two decades that investors don’t know how to react now that the central bank is pulling back and trying to slow the economy. “This is a very big change, and the markets are having trouble processing it,” said Robert Dent, senior U.S. economist for Nomura Securities.
Adding to the uncertainty are continued lockdowns in China, surging inflation, supply constraints and a spike in oil prices. That has complicated the outlook for the global economy, though some Wall Street forecasters remain optimistic. In a research note published yesterday, Goldman Sachs said that it forecasts a recovery in major equity indexes. “The tightening in U.S. financial conditions has somewhat rebalanced the risks to the Fed’s mandate and potentially set the stage for a stabilization in the financial market environment,” the note said.
Tech stocks and crypto prices are falling again. Bitcoin this morning hit its lowest level since July 2021. Tech companies, both global powerhouses and start-ups, are also feeling the pain. Share prices for Netflix, Meta and Peloton are all down substantially this year. Some strategists are saying prices could continue to fall until they land back where they were before the pandemic. For tech stocks, that would be a further 25 percent drop. For crypto, it could be a plunge of more than 60 percent…