What to buy as Europe nears its sub-prime moment

With the banking system dangerously exposed to bad debts, the eurozone crisis is starting to look like the subprime crisis of 2008. John Stepek looks at what it means for you, and how to protect your wealth.

The US is on the verge of a bear market.

Yesterday, the S&P 500 closed down nearly 3%, hitting its lowest level since last September. The market has now fallen 19% since April, when it hit its post-2008 peak. That's a shade off the 20% commonly defined as a bear market.

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John Stepek

John Stepek is a senior reporter at Bloomberg News and a former editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He graduated from Strathclyde University with a degree in psychology in 1996 and has always been fascinated by the gap between the way the market works in theory and the way it works in practice, and by how our deep-rooted instincts work against our best interests as investors.

He started out in journalism by writing articles about the specific business challenges facing family firms. In 2003, he took a job on the finance desk of Teletext, where he spent two years covering the markets and breaking financial news.

His work has been published in Families in Business, Shares magazine, Spear's Magazine, The Sunday Times, and The Spectator among others. He has also appeared as an expert commentator on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, BBC Radio Scotland, Newsnight, Daily Politics and Bloomberg. His first book, on contrarian investing, The Sceptical Investor, was released in March 2019. You can follow John on Twitter at @john_stepek.