This feeds through to corporate profits, placing further pressure on the stock market.
For the better part of the last four years, Wall Street's bull market has been unstoppable.
The benchmark S&P 500 lost about 20% in the fourth quarter of 2018 after it topped 30, and the COVID-19 crash wiped away 34% of the S&P 500's value in just 33 calendar days in February-March 2020.
Sean Williams is a data-driven Motley Fool contributing analyst who's been investing for 28 years and has penned north of 16,000 articles.