On Tuesday, November 30th, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell indicated before a Senate committee that the U.S. Federal Reserve could speed up its efforts in tapering its monthly bond buying program noting that this issue will be discussed at the FOMC December meeting. Originally, the monthly bond-buying would have ended around June 2022; however, after these comments, the purchases may be ending in April 2022. As a result of his comments, and the implications that perhaps inflation is not transitory as they had posited throughout the summer, U.S. Treasury Rates rose, causing U.S. equities to sell-off. Markets were already somewhat nervous given the newly emergent Omicron strain of COVID, though data on this mutation is too early to draw conclusions on at this point.
Source: CNBC