John Authers, Columnist

This Bout of Stock Market Angst Looks Much Darker

We’ve gone from correcting excess to questioning the basic assumptions of a pandemic recovery that underpinned the rally.

The death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg has compounded political uncertainty.

Photographer: Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg
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The stock market sold off again Wednesday. It has done so more often than not this month. But it would be a mistake to draw a line between the latest bout of negativity and those that preceded it. Earlier sell-offs involved an attempt to correct obviously excessive prices in some of the dominant tech names. The latest sell-off was about rethinking the basic assumption that the U.S. and world economies can continue to recover, buoyed by continuing Fed largesse. This wasn’t so much “we took things too far” as “we might have taken things in completely the wrong direction.”