Market Watch: Evergrande Isn't the Only Reason the Stock Market is Headed for Its Worst Day in 2 Months. Here Are 5 Other Reasons

Article by Mark DeCambre in Market Watch

U.S. stock benchmarks were on track to post the worst daily drop in more than two months, with the skid being blamed on the potential collapse of Evergrande. The Chinese property giant is threatening to default on $300 billion in debt that could ripple through global markets.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average, the S&P 500 index and the Nasdaq Composite indexes were all facing sharp declines at Monday’s open.

However, the sharp downturn by the highly leveraged real-estate sector, which the Financial Times notes makes up more than 28% of China’s economy, isn’t the only problem for markets on Monday.

Here are a few others.

Delta Woes

The delta variant of COVID-19 is resulting in higher cases in the world’s largest economy.

The U.S. is now averaging more than 2,000 deaths daily, according to a New York Times tracker, the most since March 1, and consist almost entirely of unvaccinated people. 

Fed Taper Talk

Markets are fixated on the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee’s Sept. 21-22 meeting, where Fed officials facing the prospect of removing accommodations that have propped markets up since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S., even as the economic rebound looks uneven.

The Fed has been buying $80 billion of Treasurys and $40 billion of mortgage-backed securities each month since last June to keep long-term interest rates low and bolster demand. It said it would maintain the purchases until the economy hit a threshold of “substantial” progress on inflation and the .......

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