Unprecedented To experience an “unprecedented” event is to go through one that has never happened before. The term is used liberally, though where the markets are concerned, there are very few truly unprecedented events. This, however, has been one of those rare times. It was an unprecedented market in the first quarter of 2022 — one of the worst starts to the year, and one of very few quarters when both equities and fixed income markets delivered negative returns. It was also the worst performance for fixed income markets in 30 years. If the markets end the year with the current performance, then another extremely rare outcome would have emerged — that of fixed income markets generating a second consecutive year of losses. We are less than a third through this year now, and there are a lot of things that can happen both positively or negatively from here on.