It was a week of market turmoil that began with the collapse of a small bank in the United States, spiraled into a panic about the global financial system and ended with a bold effort to stanch the cascading crisis.
And it was the clearest illustration yet of the dangerous side effects of campaigns by central banks to raise interest rates.
In the year since the Federal Reserve began pushing rates higher, in an effort to stamp out runaway inflation, investors have watched shares of speculative tech companies crash, emerging markets fall into default and the nascent cryptocurrency market unravel.
This week, it was the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, a midsize bank that predominantly served start-ups and venture capital firms, that incited chaos in the markets and prompted fears of a financial crisis.
Stocks swung wildly day to day, oil prices slid to lows not seen in over a year and yields on government bonds suddenly reversed their march higher as investors began to wonder about the impact of the escalating crisis on the economy.
As the dust begins to settle, here’s a summary of what happened in markets this week, and what it tells us about investors’ views of the world.
A crisis in small banks was provoked by a collapse in California.
The trouble began on March 8, when Silicon Valley Bank revealed steep losses on its portfolio of government bonds and mortgages, ostensibly safe investments that backed the bank’s deposits and that had taken a hit from rising interest rates. The bank’s shares plunged, depositors rushed to pull out their money and, within days, authorities seized control of the bank (as well as Signature Bank, based in New York), pledging to keep it open for business.
But in the markets, investors couldn’t shake the worry that other banks were facing similar problems, and that induced a panic regarding a number of small lenders, including First Republic Bank, PacWest and Western Alliance. The wave of selling in their shares appeared to end only on Thursday, after a group of rival lenders said they would bolster First Republic with $30 billion in deposits.
But even after a rebound, most of those banks’ share prices remain sharply lower than they were before the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. First Republic has lost over 70 percent of its value since the start of the month, while PacWest and Western Alliance are both down more than 50 percent.
The broader stock market seemed to look beyond this week’s turmoil.
The good news for most investors is that the S&P 500 was resilient to worries that centered on the banking industry, and after a big rally on Thursday the index was actually on track to end the week with a gain of around 2.5 percent. If that holds, it would be the index’s second-best week of the year.
It shows that, to stock investors at least, the crisis in the banking sector appears mostly contained. It helped that policymakers in the United States and Europe stepped in to back their banks. Authorities guaranteed deposits at SVB and Signature, and in Europe, Credit Suisse said it would tap a $54 billion lifeline from the Swiss National Bank after investors there began to panic over its financial state — though for very different reasons than with SVB.
But investors in other markets are worried about the economy.
Perhaps the starkest evidence of a shifting view on the economy came in the market for government bonds. On Wednesday, the yield on two-year U.S. government notes, known as Treasuries, plummeted by a magnitude not seen since Black Monday in October 1987, one of the worst market crashes on record.
The two-year yield is a barometer of changing expectations for interest rates, and it had been climbing fast as investors bet on further rate hikes from the Fed.
In early March, the yield had crossed above 5 percent for the first time since 2007. By late Thursday, the yield had tumbled to just 4.14 percent — a huge swing by the bond market’s standards.
The signal from the markets was clear: The Fed is going to need to start cutting interest rates, instead of raising them, sooner than was thought — something it typically does only when the economy runs into trouble.
It isn’t just the American economy that investors are worried about. A slide in commodity prices this week shows that they’re concerned about the global economy, too.
Crude oil prices are illustrative of this. After suffering its second sharpest fall of the year, on Wednesday, a barrel of West Texas Intermediate crude is now close to its lowest price since late 2021.
Demand for oil is global, making it a barometer for the health of the world’s economy. It often fluctuates with economic news from other parts of the world. When things are booming, oil demand is high, and oil prices typically rise. Such a sharp fall is a warning that investors fear demand will wane if the economy falters.
In other words, it may not be over yet.
For the time being, a semblance of stability has returned, but investors remain on tenterhooks about the potential for more damage to emerge.
Asked about the possible risks, some analysts point to other corners of the market susceptible to high interest rates, like the corporate debt market that ballooned after the 2008 financial crisis. The pain in the banking sector could also prompt lenders to pull back from new business, tightening access to a crucial source of cash should companies start to run into trouble — restrictions that could weigh on growth.
And, of course, a big fear for investors is usually that something has yet to be uncovered, like the trouble at a regional bank in Silicon Valley just over a week ago.
