Standard & Poor’s 500 – the stock market index tracking the performance of 500 major companies operating in the US, has suffered over $7 trillion in losses since December, with its total valuation dropping nearly 20 percent, with close to $3 trillion of the drop faced by tech giants like Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Tesla, Google owner Alphabet and Facebook owner Meta.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average has also come on hard times, down nearly 14 percent since the start of the year, with the Nasdaq down close to 29 percent over the same period – including a 20 percent drop over the past month.
Tech stocks alone lost over $1 trillion in value over just three trading days at the end of last week, with Apple shedding $220 billion, Microsoft dumping $189 billion, Tesla losing $199 billion in market capitalization, and Amazon out $173 billion.
Netflix secured the top spot as the worst performer of the S&P 500 so far this year, shedding over 70 percent of its market value.
On Tuesday, Bloomberg calculated that markets globally have dropped $11 trillion since the end of March alone.
The downturn has pushed investors into perceived safer harbours, like General Mills, Kellogg, ConAgra, Kraft Heinz, JM Smucker, Tyson Foods and the Campbell Soup Company.
The bear market comes amid growing fears of a recession, fueled by concerns of an increasingly aggressive fed push to try to tame inflation, soaring energy prices caused in part by NATO’s efforts to sanction Russia into submission over Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine, and the pumping of trillions of new dollars into the economy by the federal government over the past two plus years. The Fed moved forward with a 0.5 percent interest rate hike on 4 May.
Speaking at a fundraiser of Democratic donors in Chicago on Wednesday, President Biden warned that the party “can’t let” inflation get out of control, or face the risk lof osing the mid-terms in November. “So, we have to – and it’s going to be hard. It’s going to be hard because inflation is going to scare the living hell out of everybody,” he said.
Biden went on to slam the party for failing to sufficiently play up his administration’s accomplishments, and to blame Vladimir Putin and the supply chain crisis for America's economic woes.
“Our inflation rate is lower than almost any other nation – industrial nation in the world. We’re in a situation where we find ourselves with supply chain problems and Putin’s gas tax in the extreme,” Biden said.
Putin has dismissed that he is responsible for America’s economic problems. “An effort is being made to convince you that all your difficulties are the result of some kind of hostile actions by Russia, that you have to pay for the fight against the mythical Russian threat through your wallet. All of this is a lie. The truth is that the current problems that millions of people in the West face are the result of the many actions by the ruling elites of their states, their mistakes, myopia and ambitions,” Putin said at a meeting with officials in March.