What sparked the fall?
Nervousness had been building for days on Wall Street. The catalyst was the recent spike in the yield on a closely watched government bond to a seven-year high.
The 10-year Treasury note – whose key rate impacts the pricing on things ranging from fixed-rate mortgages to stocks to virtually every financial asset on the planet – recently climbed above 3.25 percent for the first time since May 2011. And when you add the threat of higher borrowing costs on things such as houses and cars and corporate debt to the economic obstacles caused by the U.S. trade war with China, all it takes is a whiff of weakness to set a major sell-off in motion.
"We don't know who is to blame here; it's a little like trying to find what or who is responsible for the dangerous hurricane in Florida today," says Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at MUFG, a Tokyo-based global bank with offices in New York. "But make no mistake about it, the stock market decline, triggered perhaps by rising bond yields, is just as dangerous."
SOURCE: USA TODAY.
