Red Monday: Emergency rate cut needed? US equities just experienced their worst day since 2022, with the S&P 500 dropping 3.0%, the Nasdaq falling 3.4%, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeting by 1033 points. All sectors in the US saw declines, with mega-cap tech stocks performing particularly poorly. Notably, NVIDIA saw a sharp fall of 15% during the trading day, though it managed to “recover”, ending down 6.4%.
Some have called for an emergency rate cut from the Fed, but this is unlikely as this event, as it stands, is not an existential threat to the markets. It's just a large sell off.
Did US stocks get off lightly?
Ahead of the US trading session, Japan's stock market experienced its steepest decline since Wall Street's Black Monday in 1987, fueling fears of widespread market instability.
Despite the severe sell-off, some relief came from the ISM Services PMI, which indicated a stronger rebound in the services sector, helping to alleviate investor concerns to some extent. Riskier assets, such as Bitcoin, were not spared, plunging from nearly $62,000 on Friday to around $54,000 by Monday.
Contributing factors to the market turmoil include fears that the Federal Reserve is lagging in cutting interest rates, potential unwinding of the Yen carry trade, and the Sahm rule signaling the onset of a recession.
This rule signals the onset of a recession when the three-month average unemployment rate rises by 0.5 percentage points or more above its lowest point in the past year. The threshold was surpassed recently when the unemployment rate climbed to 4.3%.
Sahm
🔥 The Number 1 Recession Indicator Signals Great Danger 🚨 The Sahm Rule Recession Indicator (white) is on the rise. Historically, a rise in this indicator has always signaled a recession and a corresponding fall in asset prices.
How it's calculated:
"The Sahm Rule identifies signals related to the start of a recession when the three-month moving average of the national unemployment rate (U3) rises by 0.50 percentage points or more relative to its low during the previous 12 months."
In other words, once unemployment starts to rise quickly, this indicator moves up and a recession is on the horizon.
Since it's inception in the 1950's, every time this indicator reaches above 0.3, the trend seems to be irreversible and only reverses back after the recession is "over". See the orange line for the performance of the SP500: it has an inverse relationship with the SAHM indicator.
Keep a close eye on this indicator. Seeing how fast it's rising, there's historically a huge probability that the US economy will see a recession somewhere in the next few months. Keep an eye out for bearish price action in stocks and crypto during this time.
