Wall Street entered a bear market Monday, as concerns about the economy and increasing interest rates dropped the S&P 500 more than 20% below its early-year high.

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The index fell 3.9% in the first opportunity for traders to invest after taking the weekend to contemplate the shocking news that inflation is worsening. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell more than 1,000 points before concluding with an 876-point loss.

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The Federal Reserve, which is struggling to keep inflation under control, was once again at the centre of the sell-off. Its main method to do that is to raise interest rates in order to slow the economy, a blunt tool that risks a recession if used too aggressively.

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Wall Street’s sobering realization that inflation is accelerating, not peaking, is also sending U.S. bond yields to their highest levels in more than a decade. The two-year Treasury yield shot to 3.36% from 3.06% late Friday in its second straight major move. It earlier touched its highest level since 2007, according to Tradeweb.

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The 10-year yield jumped to 3.37% from 3.15%, and the higher level will make mortgages and many other kinds of loans more expensive. It touched its highest level since 2011.

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The higher yields mean prices are tumbling for bonds, a relatively rare occurrence for them in recent decades. They’re also a particularly painful hit for older and more conservative investors who depend on them as the safer parts of their nest eggs.

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Some of the biggest hits came for cryptocurrencies, which soared early in the pandemic as ultralow rates encouraged some investors to pile into the riskiest investments. Bitcoin tumbled more than 14% from a day earlier and dropped below $23,400, according to Coindesk. It’s back to where it was in late 2020 and down from a peak of $68,990 late last year.

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On Wall Street, the S&P 500 fell 151.23 points to 3,749.63 and dropped 21.8% below its record set early this year to put it into what investors call a bear market.

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The S&P 500 has lost nearly 9% in just three days. That’s its worst stretch since the earliest days of the coronavirus crash in March 2020. The Dow lost 876.05, or 2.8%, to 30,516.74 on Monday, and the Nasdaq composite dropped 530.80, or 4.7% to 10,809.23.

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The coronavirus crash in early 2020 was Wall Street’s last bear market, and it was an unusually short one that lasted only about a month. The S&P 500 got close to a bear market last month, but it didn’t finish a day below the 20% threshold.