Stocks have been under pressure since late August after comments and aggressive actions by the US Federal Reserve signaled the central bank's top priority is to stamp out high inflation even at the risk of putting the economy into a recession.
Since then, Fed Chair Jerome Powell has amped up his own rhetoric, declaring last week "the clock is kind of running" on the Fed to show it could tame prices before public psychology begins to change for the worse.
Minutes after the rate hike that was widely predicted by the market, stocks had initially pared gains as investors worried about the prospect of tighter monetary policy tipping the economy into a recession.