The “Powell put” comes to the markets' rescue

2018 was the worst year for US stocks since the financial crisis. But the Federal Reserve has said it is willing to suspend quantitative tightening if the situation worsens.

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US consumption and growth should remain solid
(Image credit: 2018 Getty Images)

"Yes, stocks do go down sometimes," says Carleton English in the New York Post. US equities surged in 2016 and 2017. But 2018 was their worst year since the financial crisis. The S&P 500 index, which tends to set the tone for the world, fell by around 6%. It slumped by 10% last month, the worst December performance since 1931, when America was suffering from the Great Depression. The technology-dominated Nasdaq index lost 4%. Other markets fared worse. Britain's FTSE 100 slipped by 12.5%; Germany's blue-chip DAX index lost a fifth. There are plenty of reasons for markets to be "skittish", says The Economist.

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Marina Gerner is an award-winning journalist and columnist who has written for the Financial Times, the Times Literary Supplement, the Economist, The Guardian and Standpoint magazine in the UK; the New York Observer in the US; and die Bild and Frankfurter Rundschau in Germany.

Marina is also an adjunct professor at the NYU Stern School of Business at their London campus, and has a PhD from the London School of Economics.

Her first book, The Vagina Business, deals with the potential of “femtech” to transform women’s lives, and will be published by Icon Books in September 2024.

Marina is trilingual and lives in London.