Stock market’s plunge continues on new concerns about global economy.

Annual inflation reached 8.5 percent in March, its fastest pace in over 40 years, with fuel and food driving prices higher, and economists expect that price gains will have slowed slightly when the data on the Consumer Price Index for April is released later in the week. One month of better data probably won’t be enough to calm markets, analysts say, but it could be a start.

“The bottom line is that markets don’t like uncertainty and the current macro environment is tenuous at best,” said Brian Price, head of investment management at Commonwealth Financial Network. “Any positive developments on the geopolitical front, or softer-than-expected inflationary readings, could help to abate the recent selling pressure.”

No matter when it ends, there’s no question that the recent stretch of volatility has stood out in a market that for years was remarkably placid.

In 2021, there was seemingly no bad news that could stop the U.S. stock market, with the S&P 500 gaining 26.9 percent, and the index had daily gain or loss of more than 2.5 percent just once, on Jan. 27, as meme stocks like GameStop and AMC Entertainment spiked in a speculative frenzy and the Federal Reserve said a resurgent coronavirus was weighing on the economic recovery.

That started to change when the Fed moved away from describing inflation as “transitory,” or something that might end as pandemic lockdowns eased, and instead adopted a more aggressive tone toward cooling down rapid prices. Through Monday, there have already been eight days this year with gains or losses of at least 2.5 percent — about one in every nine trading days. All those big daily changes have been in March, April and May.

Strings of big gains and losses are more typical of recessions and the periods that follow them. Before the pandemic wreaked havoc on the stock market in 2020, the last string of big changes was in 2007-11, during the financial crisis and the recovery from it. Before that, the dot-com boom and bust, and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, brought volatility.

Bear markets are similarly uncommon, with the last two having occurred in early 2020 and in the financial crisis before. The 20 percent trigger for a bear market — like the 10 percent trigger for what investors call a “correction” — are somewhat arbitrary thresholds, but they serve as mile markers to show that investors have turned pointedly more pessimistic about the world.

The reasons for that pessimism abound right now, and will “drag the S&P 500 into a bear market,” said Victoria Greene, chief investment officer at G Squared Private Wealth, an advisory firm.

“We still have some structural problems — a hawkish Fed, Ukraine, commodity price pressure, Covid shutdowns in China, inflation — that are pressuring growth expectations,” she said. “The pressures from the macro world are too much for stocks to overcome at this point.”

Reporting was contributed by Claire Fu Jeanna Smialek Melina Delkic and William P. Davis.