Stocks sink, bonds soar on fears virus will stunt economy

Stocks slumped again on Wall Street Tuesday, piling on losses a day after the market’s biggest drop in two years as fears spread that the growing virus outbreak will put the brakes on the global economy.Nervous investors snapped up low-risk U.S. government bonds, sending the yield on the 10-year Treasury note to a record low.The benchmark S&P 500 has lost 7.6% over the last four days, it’s worst such stretch since the end of 2018. At Apple, which said last week that the virus will force it to fall sort of a previous quarterly revenue forecast, $158.6 billion in market value has vanished in the last four days.One measure of fear in the market, which shows how much traders are paying to protect themselves from future swings for the S&P 500, touched its highest level since December 2018, when stocks were tumbling on worries about a possible recession.The chief risk is that the stock market was already “priced to perfection,” or something close to it, before the virus worries exploded, according to Brian Nick, chief investment officer at Nuveen.After getting the benefit of three interest-rate cuts from the Federal Reserve last year and the consummation of a “Phase 1” U.S.-China trade deal, investors were willing to pay high prices for stocks on the expectation that profits would grow in the future.