Wall Street has indeed dropped at the opening bell, joining a broad global stock selloff.

Here are the opening snaps via Reuters:

• S&P 500 DOWN 25.61 POINTS, OR 0.66%, AT 3,881.10 AFTER MARKET OPEN
  
• NASDAQ DOWN 157.84 POINTS, OR 1.14%, AT 13,716.63 AFTER MARKET OPEN
• DOW JONES DOWN 168.66 POINTS, OR 0.54%, AT 31,325.66 AFTER MARKET OPEN

Every major stock index across Europe has lost ground on Monday, part of a global sale of stocks.

The FTSE 100 has pulled back some of its earlier losses, down by 0.5% at about 6,592 points.

The Europe-wide Stoxx 600 index has lost 0.5%.

More bad headlines for Boeing. This time it’s a 747 jumbo jet shedding parts after takeoff in the Netherlands.

The 747 is all but retired (a new US presidential plane may be its swansong) so it likely won’t affect the company directly, but it comes on the same day as a limited 777 grounding after those planes also shed engine parts.

Boeing’s safety record has faced more scrutiny than ever before since two fatal crashes of its bestselling 737 Max jet.

You can read the full story here:

A quick check in on bitcoin: the cryptocurrency hit a new record high of $58,445 late last night (UK time) according to Refinitiv data, but it has since retraced some of that progress, hovering around the $53,000 mark at the time of writing.

That represents a 6% fall over the course of Monday, but $53,000 remains far more expensive than even a week ago, when it was worth about $48,000. As recently as mid-December bitcoin was worth less than $20,000.

The cryptocurrency has surged in value this year since Tesla revealed it had spent $1.5bn on it - following comments from chief executive Elon Musk strongly backing it.

Musk has taken evident delight in his ability to move cryptocurrency markets. He was back at it yesterday, tweeting about dogecoin, a joke cryptocurrency that has soared in value since he started backing it publicly.

Part of the inflation surprise has come about because of rising commodity prices. Demand for commodities slumped during the first phase of the pandemic, but it has come roaring back.

Those moves have had two effects. First of all, the slump in prices a year ago means that headline measures of inflation are set to jump above targets. Secondly, the more recent price increases will raise costs for companies, even if core inflationary pressures aren’t building as fast. Both of those effects will make it uncomfortable for doves who favour keeping borrowing costs low.

The gains for commodity prices have been notable.

Oil prices are up 1% today. One barrel of Brent crude oil for April delivery costs $63.54, a price not seen since January 2020, until the last week at least. West Texas Intermediate, the North American benchmark, is also up 0.9% on Monday, having earlier broken the $60 mark.

Price swings for some base metals has been even more marked. Copper futures prices have long left behind pre-pandemic levels, slipping back from a nine-year high on Monday.

Let’s dive into today’s stock market moves: after all, the FTSE 100 is down 0.6% and Europe’s Stoxx 600 index is down 0.7% despite hopes of economic recovery as vaccines work their magic. What’s going on?

“Inflation expectations” is the answer given by many analysts. Stronger growth is good for the economy, but it could also prompt prices to rise if demand outstrips supply. That in turn could cause central banks to think about reducing the huge stimulus programmes they brought in to tackle the pandemic’s economic crisis.

Bond markets are pricing in higher inflation (which eats into their returns, reducing their value). Bond yields, which move inversely to prices, have jumped during the first two months as inflation expectations have risen.

The pace of bond market moves during 2021 has taken many investors by surprise. Take the US 10-year Treasury, investors’ benchmark: the yield has risen from well below 1% on new year’s eve to just shy of 1.4% this morning.

Kit Juckes of Société Générale said the rise in yields could go one of two ways: it could make investors think a bit more carefully about pumping up riskier assets like stocks (and some stocks in particular) while not prompting major moves; or rising yields could signal that inflation is really coming, forcing the US Federal Reserve “to hurt the global economy to get it under control”.

We’re in the optimistic camp because we doubt we’ll see enough underlying/core inflation to feed the bond sell-off for very long, and we think global economic recovery is a bigger long-term story than a rise in bond yields from very low, to merely low. That said, this is going to get prettty bumpy.

There is little doubt that prices of stocks and bonds have been pumped up by central bank stimulus. If investors fear that the Fed, the European Central Bank or others like the Bank of England are going to take away the punch bowl then the party could end very quickly - even if trillions of dollars, euros and pounds of stimulus are still in place.

Stephen Innes, a strategist at Axi, a trading platform, likened the mood to the “taper tantrum” of 2013, when concerns that the Federal Reserve could start to reduce its bond purchases triggered a bond selloff. He said:

The real danger in higher Treasury yields is not the Fed or inflation – it’s the market’s perception of a threat that is likely much greater than anything that might even actualize.

In case you missed it yesterday: Electric buses built by Arrival, the UK-based manufacturer, will be tested on British roads for the first time later this year in a trial with the transport company First Group.

The tests will begin in the autumn of this year, starting with four of the first production vehicles produced at Arrival’s research and development facility in Banbury, Oxfordshire. Discussions are under way about further trials with other companies.

Arrival has burst onto the UK automotive scene, targeting urban vans and buses rather than cars. It hopes to use an unorthodox production technique to make battery electric vehicles more cheaply.

Arrival is also looking at an undisclosed number of new sites for factories within the UK, a signal of its intent to ramp up output as it prepares a reverse listing on the Nasdaq stock exchange in New York at a valuation of $5.4bn (£3.9bn). The company’s main operations will remain in the UK.

You can read the full story here:

Sterling has recovered ground since traders in London finished their breakfasts: it is now up for today at $1.4020 against the US dollar.

That represents a meagre 0.05% gain for Monday, but in the context of the last few years - during which the currency was held back by the threat of a no-deal Brexit - $1.40 is the highest for nearly three years.

Another key reason for the pound’s strong performance during 2021 so far has been its relative speed compared to other major economies in rolling out vaccines. Some economists believe that has laid the groundwork for a faster economic recovery.

There are signs that the pound may have been oversold even before the vaccine good news. David Owen, chief European economist at Jefferies, an investment bank, said that “part of the supposed underperformance of the UK economy last year was a measurement issue”. Jefferies forecasts GDP will fall by 5.6% in the first quarter of 2021, followed by a rapid recovery of 7.7% in the second quarter.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s approach to ending the UK’s lockdown could end up capping much further upside for the pound, said Ricardo Evangelista, an analyst at ActivTrades, a spreadbetting website.

The pound has, so far, been the top performing currency of the year, thanks to a successful vaccine rollout that generated enthusiasm amongst investors. If the UK’s roadmap to exit lockdown and reignite its economy proves to be too cautious in the eyes of market operators the pound’s recent galloping performance may start to fizzle out.

Germany’s business confidence has risen much more sharply than expected during February, according to a closely followed index run by the Ifo Institute.

The index hit 92.4* in February, signficantly above the 90.5 consensus from economists.

Klaus Wohlrabe, an Ifo economist, said the German economy was looking towards an upswing as confidence improved in construction, retail and other services sectors.

Expectations of German industry - a key part of the Eurozone economy - were especially pronounced, with production plans revised upwards significantly.

*This post has been corrected. The correct reading for the index was 92.4, not 94.2 as initially stated. Thanks to user Pyjamapeople for pointing out the error.

An added note on G4S: it is the biggest faller on the FTSE 350, down 10% after GardaWorld pulled out of the bid battle before it had really started.

However, that has still left shares at a higher point than they were before the pandemic.

An hour into the week’s trading, and UK stocks are not having a great time.

The FTSE 100’s blue chips are down by 1% at about 6,560 points, while the mid-cap FTSE 250 has also lost 1%, down to 20,836 points.

The biggest fallers on the main index are medical device maker Smith & Nephew, down 4.3%, and grocery delivery company Ocado, down 3.5%.

It looks like deferred payments to pension funds may be something of a theme for hard-pressed sectors that have been forced to suspend their operations: British Airways is also at it, it announced today.

The airline, a subsidiary of International Airlines Group (IAG), has reached agreement with one of its pension funds to defer £450m of pension deficit contributions due between October 2020 and September 2021 as it tries to conserve cash.

The trustee of New Airways Pension Scheme (NAPS) agreed that the airline could defer monthly payments of £37.5m. In return BA will pay interest on the deferred cash and put up property assets as security.

BA will also pause dividend payments to IAG until at least the end of 2023, when its pension deficit is expected to be closed.

The prospects for UK-focused airlines are not good, given government messaging that suggests that foreign travel is unlikely to return any time soon. That is unlikely to be the case at least until other countries catch up with the UK’s vaccination efforts.

The pub and restaurant group Mitchells & Butlers has temporarily suspended payments to its staff pension fund and is pressing ahead with £350m emergency fundraising to see it through the Covid crisis.

The All Bar One owner, which also runs pub chains including O’Neill’s and restaurant brands such as Harvester, usually pays £4.2m a month into its pension fund. It has agreed to delay payments for at least three months, with plans to restart contributions in April.

Sales were down 70% between September and January, a period in which Covid rules were tightened after a brief respite over the summer.

You can read the full story here:

As expected it’s a drab start for European equities: the FTSE 100 has lost 0.6%.

The Stoxx 50 index tracking Europe’s largest stocks is down 0.2%, while US equity futures - looking ahead to this afternoon - have also dipped.