U.S. stocks fall on growth worries and China risk, before FOMC

September 20, 2021

(Reuters) – Wall Street’s main indexes tumbled on Monday, as concerns about the pace of a global recovery spurred a selloff across sectors at the start of a week in which the Federal Reserve will decide on potentially tapering its pandemic-era stimulus.

U.S. Treasury yields also fell as worries about the default of Chinese property developer Evergrande appeared to affect the broader market, with commodities slipping and investors flocking to the perceived safety of bonds.

STORY: [.N] [US/]

MARKET REACTION:

* STOCKS: Dow down 2.24%, S&P 500 down 2.20%, Nasdaq down 2.61%

* BONDS: Benchmark 10-year notes last rose 20/32 in price to yield 1.304%, from 1.37% late on Friday. [US/]

* FOREX: The dollar index rose 0.004%, with the euro up 0.04% to $1.173. [FRX/]

* VIX: The VIX was up 27% at 26.36

COMMENTS:

JACK ABLIN, CHIEF INVESTMENT OFFICER, CRESSET CAPITAL MANAGEMENT, CHICAGO

“Investors are concerned that the Evergrande issue is going represent a domino… Investors are tending to sell first and look into it to later.”

PAUL NOLTE, PORTFOLIO MANAGER, KINGSVIEW ASSET MANAGEMENT, CHICAGO

“We’ve been calling for a correction for forever and we may finally be getting it. We’ve been waiting for a genesis and we might be seeing it coming from China.

“But we’re not seeing the movement to safe havens that you’d expect if this were a more concerning decline. Bonds are rallying a little bit, Dollar’s rallying a little bit, but we’re not seeing that huge movement.

“The Fed meeting this week will be a big deal, but outside of that, there’s the politics of the debt ceiling. There’s plenty of stuff out there, but it’s all been out there for six months.”

JAKE DOLLARHIDE, CEO, LONGBOW ASSET MANAGEMENT, TULSA, OKLAHOMA

“We’re due for a correction. It’s like the market is addicted to buying the dip. Every time it goes down five or six percent, all this liquidity jumps in to prop us back up.”

“Today, the market is down because of the Chinese real estate contagion threat, despite a lot of good headlines recently on COVID. The market is done trading on COVID, it wants to trade on something else, it’s looking for the next big thing.”

JIM VOGEL, INTEREST RATE STRATEGIST, FHN FINANCIAL, MEMPHIS

“The long end of the curve has been flatter over the last couple of weeks, which implies a certain degree of hedging already in front of equity or other risk concerns in other asset classes. There’s not a great deal of room to do more right now based on this size of move to protect against further risk.

“It’s not that people (bond traders) are shrugging this off. But they’re somewhat already positioned in terms of Treasuries for a sell-off, not necessarily one of this size. You’ve got an awful lot of people that are not yet willing to buy in front of the FOMC on Wednesday. It just seems like a low payoff event because if you think about what could send rates fundamentally lower from here, it would have to be a pretty dovish Fed and we have not seen that kind of guidance from any of the speakers before the blackout started.

“There’s possible upside in buying today, but all things considered, particularly if China comes back and does anything to support its markets overnight, then if you’ve got some downside risk to committing here today.”

(Compiled by the Global Finance & Markets Breaking News team)

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