STOCKS SLIDE IN VOLATILE, ANXIOUS TRADING
S&P 500 declines 3.6 percent, erasing Wednesday’s gain
Stocks dived Thursday, erasing gains from their best day since 2020 in a swing that highlights Wall Street’s heightened anxiety over what the Federal Reserve’s campaign to slow inflation means for the economy.
The S&P 500 fell 3.6 percent, after surging 3 percent Wednesday. The Nasdaq composite slid 5 percent, its biggest drop since June 2020.
The volatility was on display in other financial markets, too. Yields on government bonds spiked, with the rate on 10-year U.S. Treasury notes, a benchmark for borrowing costs across the economy, climbing above 3 percent and touching its highest level since 2018, reversing a drop Wednesday.
The stomach-churning
swings in the stock market have become bigger than usual in recent weeks, as investors panic that a combination of inflation and fastrising interest rates could hit consumer spending, corporate profits and — ultimately — economic growth. In between those bouts of panic, glimmers of good news have triggered big rallies.
On Wednesday, the Fed raised its benchmark rate by half a percentage point. That decision was widely expected by investors, and after the Fed chair, Jerome Powell, said in a news conference that policymakers weren’t considering even larger increases — specifically ruling out a 0.75 percentagepoint jump — the S&P 500 soared.
The Fed is quickly withdrawing support for the economy, aiming to dampen demand and cool off price gains that are now at their fastest in over four decades. But the central bank has also acknowledged that some factors behind rising prices are out of its reach,
namely Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has pushed energy prices higher, and China’s recent COVID lockdown, which could further disrupt an already unsteady supply chain.
Thursday’s drop was an acknowledgment from investors that, even though the Fed might not go as far as raising interest rates by three-quarters of 1 percent in one day, it is still moving aggressively. The central bank plans to shrink its $9 trillion bond holdings, a move that could directly affect financial markets.
“Markets are now reverting back to expectations for financial conditions that existed prior to yesterday’s press conference,” said Scott Knapp, chief market strategist at CUNA Mutual Group. “Investors have watched the Fed move from its theory that inflation would be transitory to one of considerable concern about its potential duration and toll on the economy.”
The shift in tone from Fed officials had led to a dive in the S&P 500 in April, with the index tumbling 8.8 percent for the month. And Powell acknowledged the
risks to the economy Wednesday, saying that lowering inflation without causing a recession — what economists refer to as a “soft landing” — would be difficult.
“I do expect that this will be very challenging; it’s not going to be easy,” Powell said, though he did express optimism that the Fed could achieve it.
“The Fed’s confidence in a soft landing and commitment to not exceed a rate hike of 50 basis points was
not enough to offset the sobering reality that a fast tightening cycle is usually a tough environment for stocks,” said Lindsey Bell, chief money and markets strategist at Ally. “The trajectory of inflation remains unclear.”
Many companies have pinned rising prices on rising labor costs, and economists worry that high inflation may become more permanent if wages continue to rise quickly. Fresh data released Thursday showed just how much those costs are rising, with weaker productivity and stronger compensation leading to an 11.6 percent increase in unit labor costs, the Labor Department reported.
“Today’s data was startling and very inflationary, suggesting that the good intentions communicated yesterday are unlikely to be realized,” Knapp said.
But investors are also about to get two more widely watched updates on the economy. The Labor Department will publish its monthly report on hiring Friday, and economists surveyed by Bloomberg currently expect it to say that 380,000 jobs were created last month, another strong showing for the economy.
The government will also release its latest update of the consumer price index Wednesday. In March, that measure of inflation rose 8.5 percent, its fastest 12-month pace since 1981.
The data and shifting expectations about the economy are fueling bigger swings in stock prices than investors have seen since 2020, a year in which the coronavirus pandemic and the
U.S. presidential election whipsawed financial markets. So far this year, the S&P 500 has gained or lost more than 2.5 percent on seven separate days, all of them in March, April and May. In 2021, there was only one day in which stocks rose or fell by that much, in late January of that year.
The bond market too has seen prices gyrate. Yields on 10-year notes have surged from about 1.6 percent at the start of the year to more than 3 percent now, but not without sharp drops as it went.
It’s all a reflection of how unsure investors are about what will happen next.
“The highly uncertain economic, inflation and interest rate outlook is driving the more frequent, large swings in investor sentiment in both the stock and bond markets,” said Kathy Bostjancic, chief U.S. financial economist at Oxford Economics.
The main question on investors’ minds is: “Will the Fed inadvertently engineer a hard landing or manage to bring about the coveted soft landing?” she said.