The S&P 500 on Monday dropped into its second bear market of the pandemic, crossing a symbolic and worrisome threshold as stocks plunge following a meteoric rise over the last two years.

The S&P 500 has fallen into a bear market, an indicator that investors are worried about the economy’s future as interest rates rise.

A bear market is a term used to describe an index dropping by at least 20% from a recent high. The S&P 500, which is a basket containing 500 of the biggest U.S. companies, was down 21.3% after open on Monday from its most recent high at the beginning of the year.

Stocks on Wall Street began trading on Tuesday with a modest gain, a day after a rush of selling pushed the S&P 500 into a bear market, leaving the index more than 20 percent below its recent peak.

The index rose 0.3 percent in early trading, even as European markets reversed their own gains and sunk deeper into the red. Markets in the Asia-Pacific region had recovered from the worst of their declines Tuesday, but still ended lower.

Global stocks drifted lower Tuesday in the wake of Wall Street’s tumble into a bear market, as investors anxiously contemplated a new and uncertain world of higher interest rates, international conflict and recession fears.

Shares traded down in Europe, erasing brief gains after the markets opened, while Asian shares fell but later recovered some gains.

Stocks tumbled Monday, pushing the S&P 500 back into bear market territory, as the major averages came off their worst week since January.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 618 points, or 1.95%, the S&P 500 fell 2.7% and the Nasdaq Composite tumbled 3.5%.

There’s broad selling “and a little bit of fear as to whether the Fed is going to make a misstep and normalize rates too quickly and create a recession,” said Jeff Kilburg, chief investment officer of Sanctuary Wealth.

Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and the parent companies of Facebook and Google have lost more than $2.7 trillion in value so far this year, about the annual gross domestic product of Britain.

So what have the companies done about this thrashing on Wall Street? Microsoft has doubled its employees’ bonus pool, Google has committed to hiring more engineers, and Apple has showered its top hardware talent with $200,000 bonuses.

The stock market tanked on Friday, adding to heavy losses this week that pushed the S&P 500 into a bear market, down over 20% from its peak in January as investors continue to get whipsawed by concerns about inflationary pressures and rising rates.

The selloff on Wall Street continued with a vengeance: The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1.6%, over 500 points, while the S&P 500 lost 1.9% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite 2.7%.

The S&P 500, the broadest measure of the U.S. stock market, slipped into bear market territory on Friday. 

The benchmark is now down 20% from its January high of 4,796.56 and needs to close at or below 3,837.25 for the official start. 

"I think you would expect with the Fed raising rates that all these assets, trillions of worldwide, would have to be repriced. But we have to get inflation under control" said James Bullard, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis during an exclusive interview with FOX Business. 

It's been a tough year for stocks — and it's only getting worse.

On Friday, the S&P 500 index entered an intraday bear market for the first time since 2020 and also signaled a market close below a January record.

A bear market occurs when a stock index declines 20 percent or more from its most recent high.

Wall Street suspended trading for second time this week after the Standard & Poor’s 500 plunged 7 percent just minutes into Thursday’s session.

The New York Stock Exchange triggered the forced 15-minute trading halt known as a circuit breaker to stop the free-fall and give traders time to recalibrate. The rarely used lever comes as the coronavirus’s accelerating spread and worsening economic outlook have rattled global markets for weeks.