It has not been a lucrative year for the stock market. The S&P has fallen for a whopping 10 weeks out of the past 11. The Dow closed below 30,000 for the first time since January 2021.
If we turn to historical data for insight into the future, things don’t look much more optimistic. According to Goldman Sachs strategist Vickie Chang, the S&P 500 has dropped below 15 percent a total of 17 times since 1950. On 11 of those occasions, the stock market bottomed out only when the Federal Reserve indicated it would loosen monetary policy.
As we currently head toward bear market territory, the Fed has given no indication of doing so. Indeed, the Fed plans to continue raising rates into 2023….