Making sense of Monday’s market sell-off
The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 2,014 points Monday. That’s a 7.8% drop, the biggest since 2008. The S&P 500 fell 7.6%. Bond prices saw huge gains, with the 10-year yield dropping as low as 0.4% at one point.
The selling occurred across the board: big losses in tech stocks, financial stocks, consumer goods and services. Crude oil in New York dropped 20%, to around $31 a barrel on Monday.
COVID-19 is making demand for oil slow down. George Pearkes at Bespoke Investment Group says, at these prices, the cost of drilling in the U.S. might not be worth it. That means jobs are on the line.
“Manufacturing jobs related to everything from pipelines, to sand, to everything that needs to get done in the oil patch,” Pearkes said. “All the services jobs that go with it.”
The main market concern, though, is what happens if the outbreak, or restrictions involving the outbreak, bring economic activity to a crawl. Does the outbreak lead to fewer people eating at restaurants, going shopping or going to conferences, regardless of how cheap gas prices might be?
Monday happened to be the 11th anniversary of the bull market. If the S&P 500 falls an additional 1.4%, that bull run will have officially ended.
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