“Assuming the global virus situation gradually improves, we expect the bottlenecks will ease in 2022 as production ramps up and shipping congestion starts to clear.”
“Lingering supply chain constraints have become a major hurdle to inventory restocking,” Lydia Boussour, lead economist at Oxford Economics, wrote in a note. Power cuts and blackouts have also slowed or closed factories across China this week. Consumer confidence is at its lowest level in seven months, the Conference Board reported on Tuesday.įactories in Vietnam, the second-biggest supplier of apparel and footwear to the United States after China, have been forced to close or operate at severely reduced capacity as coronavirus cases surged. Retailers are expecting delays and shortages of goods heading into the holiday shopping season, adding to higher labor costs and skyrocketing shipping fees. The used vehicle retailer CarMax dropped nearly 13 percent, while Gap closed 8 percent lower. Bed Bath & Beyond shares slid about 22 percent after the company slashed its sales forecast, saying that the recent rise in Covid-19 cases had led to a sharp slowdown in traffic to its stores and that costs and supply-chain problems were hitting its bottom line. Retail stocks were among the worst performing on Thursday. Analysts have said throughout the month that a correction - a Wall Street term of art for a drop of more than 10 percent - would most likely be short-lived. Those concerns eased somewhat in recent days, in part as the company said it was selling a stake it held in Shengjing Bank for about $1.5 billion, with the proceeds going toward paying down its debts.īut even with September’s drop, the S&P 500 remains more than 27 percent above its prepandemic record. The company, which has about $300 billion in debt, faced several payment deadlines. The Treasury is expected to run out of cash in October, at which point things like Social Security payments and government paychecks would be delayed, and interest rates could spike.Īdding to jitters were concerns that a default by China Evergrande Group would ripple through global markets. Yellen warned of economic catastrophe if Congress did not raise the U.S.
Throughout the month, Treasury Secretary Janet L. By Thursday afternoon the yield was 1.52 percent. With investors also eyeing the Federal Reserve’s plans to start slowing its purchases of government-backed bonds, yields on the 10-year Treasury note jumped to their highest levels in months, reaching 1.55 percent on Wednesday. debt default and as instability in China’s real estate market shook Wall Street. But stocks started to slide as concerns grew about political gridlock leading to a U.S. 2 record and a dizzying 21 percent gain since the beginning of the year. Until the recent decline, investors had shaken off the emergence of the coronavirus’s Delta variant, problems with a backed-up supply chain and persistent inflation, with the S&P 500 rallying to a Sept. A long list of worries caught up with Wall Street in September, the stock market’s worst month since the early days of the pandemic.Īfter a 1.2 percent slide on Thursday, the S&P 500 ended down 4.8 percent for September, its sharpest monthly decline since March 2020 and one that snapped a seven-month streak of gains.