What accounts for the panic in the financial markets?

Since the s tart of 2018 - and especially since September 2018 – there has been "panic" in financial markets : falling equity markets , widening credit spreads and also , in a related manner , falling bitcoin and oil prices . Yet , the consensus scenario for economies in 2019 is that of a cyclical slowdown , but not that of a financial crisis and a recession . So financial markets do not share the view of economists or international institutions and believe that there could be a recession due to protectionism , geopolitical tensions, Brexit and the Italian crisis and high debt , in addition to the cyclical slowdown . The only real risk in our view would be that the recession could become self-fulfilling and break out because of a fall in financial markets , itself caused by expectations of a recession. Currently, there does not seem to be mechanisms that could turn the cyclical slowdown into a recession.