The Big Picture

Vincent Boland: Plunging market tells us the Fed is no longer the investor’s friend

Last Tuesday was the day it became clear that the Goldilocks era, when central banks kept materialising to soothe every market tantrum, is now over

Red alert: the US stock market plunged more than 4 per cent last Tuesday. Picture: Shutterstock

When the US stock market plunged more than 4 per cent last Tuesday, in one of the most extreme daily drops of recent times, multiple factors were put forward to explain it. The most common was that investors were reacting to bad news on the inflation front, which always means more bad news on the interest rate front. Others said the markets are still overvalued, or the US dollar is too strong; there is a ...