by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street
But cryptos and DeFi created a big mess as hidden leverage is blowing up, and the mess spread to stocks.
The most interesting thing that shows up today in the stock market nightmare figures of the first-half of 2022 isn’t that it was the worst first half for the S&P 500 since 1970, which was just a coincidence of the calendar in that the S&P 500 peaked at the very beginning of the year, on January 3, and then spiraled lower for six months; whereas, for example, in the year 2000 at the beginning of the dotcom bust during which the S&P 500 would eventually drop by over 50%, the index rose 3.9% through the peak on March 23, and then fell 4.8% through June 30, for a first-half dip of just 1.0%.