This little bear went to market

All three major US indexes fell significantly yesterday, with the S&P entering a bear market for the first time since the early days of the pandemic. (Dow: -2.8% | S&P: -3.9% | Nasdaq: -4.7%)

• A bear market is defined as a 20% loss from a recent high, which occurred on January 4 for the S&P.

🪙📉 Speaking of bear markets… A weekend rout in crypto accelerated on Monday, pulling the price of bitcoin below $23,000 for the first time since December 2020.

• As of midday, more than $200 billion had been wiped off the entire crypto market since Friday. The world’s two largest tokens, bitcoin and ether, lost a respective 20+% and 30+%.
• On Sunday night, Celsius Network – one of the largest US crypto lenders overseeing ~$12 billion in assets – announced that it’s pausing all withdrawals, swaps, and transfers between accounts for its 1.7 million users due to “extreme market conditions.”

👀 Looking ahead… Futures bets placed yesterday showed traders assigned an ~81% probability that the Fed will raise interest rates by 2.5% by the end of this year, which would equate to a half percentage-point increase at each of their five remaining meetings (including one that concludes tomorrow).