Fears of financial crisis loom with mega-tech stocks deep in bear territory

THE pandemic stock-market and cryptocurrency bubble has officially burst, and now the question is whether the speculative unwind will trigger a global financial crisis.

The broad Standard & Poor’s 500 has fallen 18 per cent from its 2020 highs, the closest that the traditional US stock-market gauge has come to a bear market since the crash at the start of the pandemic in early 2020.

For the more speculative Nasdaq Composite, the damage is much worse, with a loss of 29 per cent. Bull-market leaders like electric-vehicle makers are short-circuiting. Even the mega-cap tech stocks such as Apple, Amazon and Facebook parent Meta Platforms, which seemed to be invulnerable to economic and market cycles, are now deep in bear-market territory.