The dramatic selloff in stocks that began last week and gathered steam Monday has many wondering what triggered the rout – and whether this is a healthy correction or the start of a more protracted crash.  

Here’s a look at what analysts and market strategists are saying about the stock selloff on BNN:

“When you think about the kind of selling that we’ve seen, it’s been very indiscriminate. When you think about the fact that if one of the causes is rising interest rates, we wouldn’t be selling financials; but the financials are the worst-performing sector we’ve seen so far this week. So, really, there’s not a lot of logic going on right now. The selling is agnostic of sector or vertical. And that’s the kind of selling that tends to wash itself out pretty quickly.”

- Art Hogan, managing director and chief market strategist, B. Riley FBR

"Nothing, at least thus far, has changed in the economic and corporate fundamentals. I think this pullback has really been caused by excessive valuations, and a long period of rising markets with a fair bit of investor complacency. Those are really the factors that are causing this. Everyone's been talking about [a pullback] for some time; who knew it was actually going to start on Friday?"

-Colin Stewart, CEO and portfolio manager, JC Clark Limited

“It’s too early to really get a gauge of what kind of correction this is. … The world is a completely different place today than the ’08 correction, than the ’01, than the ’99. They’re on a different level – all of them. You have to bear down, manage, and watch.”

- Rafi Tahmazian, senior portfolio manager, Canoe Financial 

 

"This equity selloff is more or less contained for now. It’s not going to lead into something that’s more systemic that’s going to really filter into cross assets space. At this point we’re seeing above trend global growth in a lot of these different economies and those currencies are reacting positively towards that. That’s the underlying macro theme that we don’t see going away just now, in spite of what we’ve seen with the Dow selling off in the last week or so."

- Bipan Rai, executive director of macro strategy, CIBC Capital Markets

"The reason why we think that this is not the start of a major bear market or a selloff is because the fundamentals are so good. We're seeing companies across the U.S. and Europe continue to beat or exceed estimates for their earnings. GDP growth – all the macro indicators – are looking strong; that sets the premise for our view that this is not the start of a selloff by any means. What would change that view and make us a bit more nervous is if wages and inflation tend to pick up much more strongly that they have been."

- Nandini Ramakrishnan, global market strategist, J.P. Morgan Asset Management

“It’s the new normal over the next month or so. I  think come summertime, come end of year, we’re going to look back and say, ‘Wow, we had that huge blip – this huge aberration —  in the marketplace.' And I do think as we progress through the year, as interest rates settle down again, we’ll be back somewhat to the norm.”

- Scott Bauer, CEO, Prosper Trading Academy 

“We’ve been in an eight-year straight up move in the markets because of earnings growth. Corporate profitability is at an all-time high … The fundamentals haven’t changed in a week. What’s happened is that perceptions and psychology has changed. Looking at this, we’ve taken 10 steps forward, and we’ve taken one step back. Essentially we’ve given up our gains for 2018. So unless you put your money in after the new year, you’re still ahead and all we’ve done is pulled back to where we were about six weeks ago in the marketplace, which is a healthy correction.”

- Alan Knuckman, chief market strategist, Agora Financial

“The market has two effects on people [in the housing market]. Firstly, if people have their down payments tied up in equities, those people could be impacted and maybe sit on the sidelines for a while until that recovers. And I think it also affects the overall psychology of the market. When things are kind of retreating in the housing market and things are retreating in the equity market, it just makes buyers feel a little less confident.”

- John Pasalis, president, Realosophy Realty