Not since March 2020 has the S&P 500-stock index fallen as steeply in one month as it just did this January.
Stocks rose Monday, trimming some of their worst monthly loss since the early days of the pandemic, as Wall Street closed a tumultuous January wracked by worries that will make everything in markets more challenging. The S&P 500 was about 1.9% higher for the day. It’s nevertheless still down 6.5% since setting a record exactly four weeks ago and is on track for a loss of 5.9% this month. That would be its worst since falling 12.5% in March 2020, when the U.S. benchmark index hit bottom after suddenly shut down the global economy. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up about 405 points, or almost 1.2%, at 35,131, after erasing an earlier loss of 229 points, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq composite was 3.4% higher. About three-fourths of the companies in the S&P 500 were up Monday, with technology stocks and a mix of companies that rely on direct consumer spending driving much of the rally. Wall Street has shook this month as investors try to get ahead of a massive shift in markets, where the Federal Reserve is about to it’s pumped into the economy and markets. The wide expectation is for the Fed to begin raising interest rates in March, among other moves to make borrowing money less easy. But uncertainty about how sharply and how quickly the Fed will move has helped cause severe swings on Wall Street, not just day-to-day but also hour-to-hour. Morning drops for stocks have quickly given way to sharp losses in the afternoon, and vice versa. On Friday, a sudden upturn in the last hour of trading managed to keep the S&P 500 from logging its fourth weekly loss in a row. The month’s heaviest losses have concentrated on parts of the stock market seen as the most expensive.
