The stock market on Monday suffered its biggest one-day fall since October as investors appeared to take a cue from the bond market and started worrying about growth. The question for traders is whether it is spooky enough to trigger what many view as a long overdue selloff, or merely offers yet another dip-buying opportunity for the bulls.
The rates market has been “signaling growth concerns for the last several months,” said Marvin Loh, senior global markets strategist at State Street, in a phone interview.
The culprit getting most of the blame Monday was the delta variant of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, and which is responsible for growing infections around the world, including the U.S. and other countries that have rolled out vaccines. Fears of renewed travel restrictions and the further spread of the highly transmissible variant, particularly among the unvaccinated, put pressure on travel-related stocks and other industries and sectors that had previously been beneficiaries of bets on cyclical companies expected to benefit the most from the economic reopening.
