The ensuing meltdown all but wiped out the 6.4 per cent gain the S&P/ASX 200 had made since the start of 2024. And it only took two days to do it.just as suddenly and violently as the sell-off did on Friday. The VIX index, which measures volatility , almost broke the charts.
What’s interesting about the sharemarket flash mini-correction is what sparked it., precipitating a somewhat frenzied fear that the world’s largest economy was heading for recession.Curiously, softer economic data sets in the United States have until last week been positive for stocks because they were seen as enhancing the size and frequency of prospective rate cuts. Typically, rate cuts are positive for sharemarkets as they make it cheaper for companies and consumers to borrow money.
It felt like an excuse for investors to sell off the market because parts of it had become too frothy – the results of what, again, in stockmarket parlance is called a “crowded trade”.Crowded trades are what we would call popular trades: stocks, or even indexes, that investors have been piling into, this year in particular. The demand pushes prices up to levels that are not supported by their fundamental valuation.
In three trading days, Nvidia fell 24 per cent and took the septet of tech giants – Apple, Meta, Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon and Tesla – on the wild slide. The US has its “magnificent seven” of tech stocks, whereas Australia has the “fabulous four” of big banks.For another example of crowded trades, closer to home, we need look no further than our “fabulous four” banks.