A little excerpt on the first 100 trading days of 2022 from Bespoke, my favorite market newsletter: 

“While everyone knows that the U.S. equity market has performed horribly in 2022, did you know that it has actually been the second-worst first 100 trading days in a year since the five-day trading week began in late 1952? Through early trading today (5/25), the S&P 500 is down 17.3% YTD, which ranks second only to 1970 for the worst start to a year when the index declined 23.7% in the first 100 trading days. Not only that, but this year has seen the worst start on record for both the Nasdaq (since 1972) and the Russell 2000 (1979), which have declined by 27.9% and 21.4%, respectively.”

After reading that, my first thought was: Are things really that bad to warrant what, collectively, is the worst start to a year in stock market history?

We have relayed this message in the past: Wall Street hates uncertainty, and, right now, we seem to have an unlimited supply of it – uncertainty regarding inflation, uncertainty regarding Fed policy and interest rates, uncertainty surrounding when the supply chain will remedy itself, uncertainty regarding whether the Federal Reserve can engineer a soft landing for the economy, and uncertainty regarding China’s ability to control the virus and keep its economy running, which continues to compound the world’s supply chain issues. All of these uncertainties are on top of the unknowns surrounding Russia and the war in Ukraine.