Tech stocks teeter as US Treasury bond yields rise

The realisation that central banks are about to tighten their monetary policies caused a sell-off in the tech-heavy Nasdaq stock index and the biggest rise in US Treasury bond yields since 2019.

Trader on the New York Stock Exchange
US traders must get used to rising interest rates
(Image credit: © Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Expect 2022 to be “a year of policy tightening”, says Andrew Sheets of Morgan Stanley. This time last year, investors thought America’s Federal Reserve wouldn’t raise interest rates until April 2024. As recently as last August, market pricing still implied that “liftoff” wouldn’t come until April 2023. Yet with inflation soaring, the Fed has been forced to take a more hawkish stance. Traders are now expecting the first rise as soon as this March.

Bond yields spike

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Markets editor

Alex is an investment writer who has been contributing to MoneyWeek since 2015. He has been the magazine’s markets editor since 2019. 

Alex has a passion for demystifying the often arcane world of finance for a general readership. While financial media tends to focus compulsively on the latest trend, the best opportunities can lie forgotten elsewhere. 

He is especially interested in European equities – where his fluent French helps him to cover the continent’s largest bourse – and emerging markets, where his experience living in Beijing, and conversational Chinese, prove useful. 

Hailing from Leeds, he studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Oxford. He also holds a Master of Public Health from the University of Manchester.