By late 2018, these negative economic surprises had reached levels ample enough to trigger a bout of risk aversion in financial markets, which particularly affected equities 1 Media Call on the June 2019 Global Economic Prospects Report, World Bank Group, Washington  DC, United States Page 2 of 10  and corporate bonds (although emerging market currencies and fixed-income markets were relatively sheltered).
Global financial conditions tightened. This tightening, however, proved short-lived, as the continuation of benign (and, in some cases, soft) inflation developments allowed major central banks to pause, or delay, the start of their normalisation process.