Equity markets in the United States and overseas have experienced a fair degree of negative volatility in the first quarter of 2022 amid an expected shift in the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy and the beginning of a relatively unexpected armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
Elevated inflationary pressures increased the odds of multiple interest rate hikes possibly taking place this year in the US and the Fed has already confirmed this scenario. As a result, the riskier segments of the equity market – i.e. the stocks with relatively weaker fundamentals – have experienced their fair share of pain.
