ASX trading down at midday after Wall Street extends losing streak

Elsewhere, infant formula company Bubs has entered a trading halt before an expected announcement regarding a new joint venture arrangement for the manufacture and distribution of Bubs’ products in China.

On Wall Street overnight, the S&P 500’s six-session losing streak is its longest since February 2020, sparked by harsh central bank tightening programs. The index swung between gains and losses throughout the session after the Federal Reserve’s James Bullard added to a chorus of officials saying more rate rises are needed and the risks to the economy remain elevated.

Longer-dated Treasuries swung to a loss, erasing an earlier rebound. The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index set a fresh record high as investors sought haven assets.

Risk assets have been in a tailspin since the US Federal Reserve delivered a third jumbo rise and warned of more pain. An escalation of Russia’s energy conflict with Europe after three pipelines were wrecked in suspected sabotage pushed European natural gas prices higher, further bruising sentiment during the session.

Investors also digested a flurry of data on Tuesday, including core capital goods orders and consumer sentiment, that paint a picture of an economy that can likely withstand additional harsh central bank tightening.

“It is an unsettled market,” said Louise Goudy, partner at Crewe Advisors. “People aren’t sure what the direction and the terminal rate will be, and that’s until we get a better sense of where we’re really going. But the Fed knows that inflation is a genie that’s hard to get back in the bottle and they want to make sure that they take care of the problem at hand.”

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Markets have been dealing with “one rolling shock after another”, and haven’t been able to fully recover, Jack Janasiewicz, portfolio manager with Natixis Investment Managers Solutions, said in an interview at Bloomberg’s New York headquarters.

“I think what’s driving the markets is they just aren’t comfortable with what’s the terminal rate that the Federal Reserve needs to get to – is it here, is it much higher, is it close?” he said. “That uncertainty creates interest-rate volatility and I think that’s what the market’s having a tough time digesting.”

Higher interest rates and the dollar are driving a lot of the recent selling, Shawn Cruz, head trading strategist at TD Ameritrade, said.

“Right now there are a lot of variables up in the air and we’re not going back and forth between optimism and pessimism – there’s a legitimate repricing and re-evaluation going on at the moment, so it makes sense that you probably aren’t going to see technical levels hold, per se,” he said.

But every tumultuous market day is a step closer to recovery, according to Julie Biel, portfolio manager for Kayne Anderson Rudnick.

“I think there’s more realism, there’s more understanding that a soft landing is just impossible to really navigate when you’ve let out this much fiscal and monetary policy,” she said. “It’s just not possible to engineer this with inflation this high. And so that realism is a positive thing. The thing is that we still kind of have a long way to go in terms of a possible correction.”

UK markets also remained in turmoil days after the new prime minister unveiled sweeping tax cuts that threaten to add to inflationary pressures. The 30-year UK government bond yield topped 5% for the first time in two decades and the pound held near $1.07.