Dow closes up nearly 550 points in rebound from bear-market lows as bond yields fall after BOE intervention
By Isabel Wang and Frances Yue
Dow snaps six-session skid, while S&P 500 ends its longest losing streak since February 2020
U.S. stock indexes on Wednesday rebounded from 2022 lows with support from a sharp fall in Treasury yields and a surprise intervention from the Bank of England in the U.K. government bond market. The Dow Jones Industrial Average snapped a six-session skid, while the S&P 500 ended its longest losing streak since February 2020.
How stock indexes traded
On Tuesday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 126 points, or 0.43%, to 29135, the S&P 500 declined 8 points, or 0.21%, to 3647, and the Nasdaq Composite gained 27 points, or 0.25%, to 10830. The Nasdaq Composite was down 32.6% from its record high from November last year.
What drove markets
The S&P 500 rose 1.9%, climbing for the first time since the Federal Reserve hiked interest rates again a week ago, and received some support from a sharp fall in Treasury yields but not before the 10-year yield early on Wednesday breached 4% for the first time since the 2008 crisis. The yield on 30-year UK gilts plummeted more than one percentage point.
The Bank of England said that it was stepping into buy unlimited amounts of long-dated bonds to help stabilize markets after gilt yields soared and the pound slumped to a record low in the wake of last Friday's U.K. budget announcements. The BOE also postponed a planned sale of gilts for next week. The yield on the 10-year gilt fell to 4.01% after the BoE's announcement.
"I think it's a warning to the Fed that that certainly things can get a bit out of control than what they imagined," said Brent Schutte, chief investment officer at Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management, by phone. "They need to be careful with breaking something. If you think about the Fed, they were driving the car 100 miles an hour last year, and other central banks braked as fast as possible."
See:Did something break? What investors need to know about U.K. financial chaos and a fragile global financial system
"The reason why the market is a little bit more happy today is because there still is some level of 'put' by central banks to make things a little less freaky," said Schutte. "Intervention today gave the markets a little bit of hope that policymakers are just blindly trying to administrate the economy and the markets.
The concept of a "Fed put" option has been around since at least the October 1987, when stock-market crash prompted the Alan Greenspan-led central bank to lower interest rates, but stubborn inflation is widely seen having eliminated the notion of a figurative "Fed put" on the stock market.
Bond markets have been leading stocks of late as investors fret that the Federal Reserve's determination to combat inflation will continue to push borrowing costs higher, damaging the economy and corporate earnings.
"Our central market view has been that pressure towards tighter U.S. financial conditions is unlikely to end until the economy either enters a clear recession or shows sustained inflation progress," wrote Dominic Wilson, economic analyst at Goldman Sachs.
See:Bond-market volatility touches one of highest levels since 2007-2009 financial crisis and recession
The S&P 500 index on Tuesday fell for its sixth session in a row, shedding 6.5% over that period, and recording its longest losing streak since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in February 2020.
Indeed the benchmark stock index has lost ground in eight of the last nine sessions, leaving its 14-day relative strength index momentum gauge at 27, where a figure below 30 is considered oversold territory.
See: 'We are in deep trouble': Billionaire investor Druckenmiller believes Fed's monetary tightening will push the economy into recession in 2023
However, Billionaire investor Stanley Druckenmiller sees a "hard landing" for the U.S. economy by the end of 2023 as the Federal Reserve's aggressive monetary tightening will result in a recession. He said he doesn't rule out "something really bad."
"I will be stunned if we don't have a recession in '23. I don't know the timing but certainly by the end of '23. I will not be surprised if it's not larger than the so-called average garden variety," Druckenmiller said at CNBC's Delivering Alpha Investor Summit on Wednesday.
Companies in focus
-- Jamie Chisholm contributed to this article.
-Isabel Wang
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
September 28, 2022 16:24 ET (20:24 GMT)
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