U.S. stocks experienced a steep fall at the start of the new year. The Nasdaq technology index fell more than three percent in a single day, the deepest daily decline since last February.
Wednesday’s trading on the New York Stock Exchange was marked by a rather big shock. The main S&P 500 index fell by almost two percent, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq lost 3.34 percent. Technology has seen its deepest one-day drop in nearly a year.
Behind the sharp decline on Wall Street is the publication, of the minutes of the meeting of the Federal Open Market Operations Commission, which within the US Federal Reserve decides on the setting of monetary policy instruments. This is the last meeting held in December last year. It implies that the Federal Reserve is willing to start raising interest rates sooner than originally expected. That is, for example, in the first half of this year.
Such a move would mean that liquidity would begin to disappear from the market as investors would be paid to bet on assets other than stocks. In that case, it is to be expected that the stock boom could end, or at least continue at a much lower intensity than before.
