• Over the past 140 years the S&P500 has had 19 bear markets (defined as a correction of 20% or more). The average price decline during these bear markets was 37.3% and they lasted an average of 289 days. As of the end of last week the S&P500 was down -13.5% so far in 2022.
• The US bond market has had positive returns, before inflation, in all but four years since 1976. Additionally, bonds had previously shown an ability to weather interest rate increases. For example, bonds only lost -3% in 1994 when the Fed raised rates six times. However, this year seems different. In the first four months of 2022 the bond market fell -10% and even safe long-term treasury bonds fell over -18%, beating the last record which occurred in 1980.
• The yield curve (2-year minus 10-year) inverted in April, which is seen as an indicator or an approaching recession.  Yet, equity markets have historically continued to rise for an additional 6-12 months before the recession starts.
• Retail investors that had increased their exposure to the stocks of both meme companies and leading technology companies over the past two years are now feeling the pain. The five tech giants (Meta, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Alphabet) have fallen by 23% from their peak in December while Bloomberg’s basket of meme stocks (ex: AMC and GameStop) has dropped more than 60% from its peak last year.