Stock Market Today: April 14th - 18th, 2025

Welcome to the trading week of April 14th!

Dow jumps 600 points Friday, capping one of the most volatile weeks on Wall Street ever: Live updates



Stocks climbed Friday as Wall Street wrapped up a historically wild week.

The S&P 500 advanced 1.81% to end at 5,363.36. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 619.05 points, or 1.56%, and closed at 40,212.71. The Nasdaq Composite climbed 2.06% to settle at 16,724.46.

Stocks took a leg higher Friday afternoon on comments from the White House that President Donald Trump is “optimistic” China will seek a deal with the U.S.

This week has been one of the most volatile periods on record for Wall Street. The major averages tumbled Thursday as traders went into risk-off mode, with trade policy uncertainty weighing on sentiment, losing a chunk of the historic gains seen on Wednesday after Trump announced a 90-day reprieve on some of his high “reciprocal” tariffs.

The S&P 500 fell 3.46% on Thursday, while the 30-stock Dow tumbled 1,014.79 points, or 2.5%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq ended the day lower by 4.31%. On Wednesday, the S&P 500 rallied 9.52% for its third-largest gain in a single day since World War II, while the 30-stock Dow skyrocketed more than 2,900 points.



The CBOE Volatility Index, known as the Vix, earlier in the week spiked above 50 before last hovering near 44.

The Trump Administration has opted for a universal tariff rate of 10% — except for China. Goods from Beijing will see a rate of 145%, a White House official confirmed to CNBC on Thursday.

China on Friday retaliated by raising its levies on U.S. products to 125% from 84%. “Even if the U.S. continues to impose higher tariffs, it will no longer make economic sense and will become a joke in the history of world economy,” the Chinese finance ministry said in a statement, according to a CNBC translation.

Meanwhile, the European Union said its trade representative was flying to Washington on Sunday to “try and sign deals.”

“We remain in the early innings of this global trade regime change, and while the 90-day pause on reciprocal tariffs temporarily reversed the market selloff, it does prolong uncertainty,” Wells Fargo Investment Institute president Darrell Cronk wrote in a note on Friday.

Here are the U.S. tariffs currently in place:

• 145% duty on all goods from China
• 25% tariffs targeting aluminum, autos and goods from Canada and Mexico not under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement
• 10% levy on all other imports

Despite the tumultuous week, the three major averages notched solid gains in the period. The S&P 500 posted a 5.7% advance for its best week since November 2023. The Nasdaq rose 7.3% during the week for its best performance since November 2022. The Dow gained nearly 5% over the week.

To be sure, the major averages remain sharply lower since April 2, when the White House announced so-called reciprocal tariffs on goods from other countries. Since then, the S&P 500 is down more than 5%.

The latest consumer sentiment numbers for April came in worse than expected. The expected inflation level also surged to its highest level since 1981, according to the University of Michigan survey on consumers.

This past week saw the following moves in the S&P:


S&P Sectors End of Week:


Major Indices End of Week:


Major Futures Markets End of Week:


Economic Calendar for the Week Ahead:

 

Country ETFs Since Liberation Day and Pause Day
Fri, Apr 11, 2025

The S&P 500 (SPY) rallied 5.7% this week but remains down 5.4% since the close on "Liberation Day" on 4/2. Below is a look at the performance of 45 country ETFs traded on US exchanges since 4/2 and since the close on 4/8 before President Trump announced the 90-day pause on reciprocal tariffs for all countries except China.



The average country ETF is down 4% since 4/2, so SPY has underperformed that since Trump's Rose Garden announcement. Since the close on 4/8 before the pause, the average country ETF has bounced back 7.9%, so SPY has underperformed slightly on the bounce-back as well.

The country ETFs that have bounced the most since the pause are ones you might expect. Asian countries like Vietnam (VNAM) and Thailand (THD) had some of the harshest reciprocal tariffs announced on Liberation Day, and since the pause, these two have bounced back 16.7% and 14.1%, respectively. Thailand (THD) is now down just 1.2% since Liberation Day.

The third best country ETF since 4/8 has been Argentina (ARGT) with a gain of 12.8%. ARGT gained 6.5% on Friday to end this week.

China -- the country most punished by Trump's tariffs -- has bounced back for US investors that own the MSCI China ETF (MCHI) since the pause even though Trump hiked China's tariff rate to 125% on Wednesday. MCHI is up 9.9% since the close on 4/8 versus SPY's gain of 7.5%. Since Liberation Day on 4/2, MCHI is down 8.3%, though, compared to SPY's decline of 5.4%.

There are four country ETFs down less than 1% since Liberation Day: South Korea (EWY), Switzerland (EWL), New Zealand (ENZL), and Belgium (EWK). Colombia (GXG) and Hong Kong (EWH) head into the weekend as the only country ETFs still down 10%+ since 4/2.

Sentiment Stays Bearish
Thu, Apr 10, 2025

Even before the extreme volatility of the past week, the technical correction in stock prices had meant that investor sentiment tanked. Granted, even when the S&P 500 was last at an all-time high in mid-February sentiment leaned bearish with the percentage of respondents to the weekly AAII survey reporting as bulls only sitting at 29.2% as of February 20. Over the next three weeks, it dropped to local lows in the 19% range and as of today's release, it was back up to 28.5%. In other words, even through all the crazy moves in the market, investors amazingly appear to be only slightly less bullish than they were at the time of the February 19 high.



Of course, that is still a muted level of bullish sentiment. Meanwhile, the percentage of respondents reporting as bears is much more elevated than it was two months ago. Whereas the February 20 reading in bears was only 40.5%, today it is at 58.9% which was down versus 61.9% last week.



That means that investors continue to overwhelmingly report bearish sentiment with increased polarization to boot. The share of respondents reporting neutral sentiment reaffirms this. That share dropped to a meager 12.5% in the latest week's data. That ranks in the first percentile of readings in the full history of the data dating back to 1987 and is the lowest reading since it came in at 11% on May 28, 2009.



Of course, other sentiment surveys offer additional looks at investor sentiment. One such report is the Investors Intelligence survey which has a survey base of newsletter writers. One perk of this survey is a much longer history beginning back in 1963. This week's release indicated the lowest level of bullish sentiment, 23.6%, since December 2008. Before that, the last time sentiment was this weak was in July 1994. So it's been rare for investors to be this outright negative of equities.

We would also note that this survey collects data through Tuesday afternoons with a release early Wednesday mornings. That means this latest data would not have reflected any reaction to yesterday's update on tariffs nor the massive surge in stock prices in response.



That weak sentiment is unsurprising given the trade war's implications for the global economy and the collapse and general volatility in stock prices we have seen in the past week. To help further quantify this, in the chart below we show the percentage spread between the S&P 500's closing highs and lows for all one-week periods ending Tuesday, which coincides with the Investors Intelligence survey's collection period, going back to the start of the survey data in 1963. In the latest week, we saw a 12% range between the S&P 500's high and low on a closing basis, one of the more volatile weeks of this period.



In the chart below, we show those weeks when the S&P 500 had a 10%+ range between high and low closing prices during the Investors Intelligence survey collection period while also trading lower during the span. As shown, the past week was the 18th example. For starters, the S&P 500's range this go around was middling (47th percentile) for these occurrences although the decline was one of the larger ones, slightly outpacing the median decline of 9.5%.

As for the changes in sentiment, bullish sentiment according to the Investors Intelligence survey is the second lowest of these instances behind late October 2008. The week-over-week decline was also larger than normal, nearly doubling the average move. While that survey's bearish sentiment reading wasn't even in line with the average, the week-over-week uptick was again more than double what has historically been the norm during weeks with this much volatility. In other words, currently, we are seeing extreme volatility and extremely bearish investor sentiment, especially among investment professionals (i.e. newsletter writers).

3 Unusual Things About This Selloff


(Updated as of 3pm CST 4/9/2025) We had the largest tariffs in over 100 years on for about 12 hours, before President Trump paused them for 90 days for countries that did not retaliate. That’s a relief, though we could be right back here in 90 days. But hopefully this gives the White House time to negotiate with everyone and ease the temperature a bit.



Keep in mind that several additional tariffs have already been imposed, including 20% tariffs on Chinese imported goods. 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum, 25% on automobiles, 25% tariffs on non-USMCA compliant goods from Canada and Mexico (and a lot of goods are non-compliant, because costs of compliance were high), and 10% tariffs on all other imports.

These are already having an impact on importers in the US, who are the ones who have to pay the taxes (tariffs!), as opposed to the exporting firm.

Here’s a hypothetical example. A small business owner in the US ordered aluminum parts from China, worth $3,380, and they crossed the border on March 31st. The shipper, DHL, requires $2,483 for import duties (tariffs) to be paid, or they’ll send the shipment back to China. The tariffs amount to a whopping 73% of the cost of goods, and include the 25% tariffs on China from Trump’s first trade war, 25% steel/aluminum tariffs, and 20% tariffs imposed on Chinese goods in March. Needless to say, it’s not easy on a business owner when a $3,380 order comes with an extra $2,483 tax bill.

But it could be worse. Luckily for this small business owner, this shipment came before the additional 84% tariffs on China’s goods go into effect on April 9th. though that’s likely to be small solace since they likely will have to order more parts for the business to continue as before. Or maybe it won’t if they decide they cannot be profitable anymore.

As you can see, its businesses in America who pay the tariffs (not China) and they’re going to have to decide whether to eat the higher cost from their own profit margins, or to pass it on to their customers. And for some owners that will mean a decision about whether they can stay in business.

This is going to be a problem for businesses across America. But when I mentioned that we have a big problem in the title, this is not what I meant (which is not to minimize the tariff problem). There’s something hugely problematic happening in markets, and it’s not even the fact that equities have crashed over the last four days. Instead, it’s the US Treasury bond market, typically the most liquid and deepest market in the world, that is throwing a fit.

Meltdown in The Bond Market
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has argued that even if the tariffs create a short-term economic slowdown and volatility in the stock market (check), that wouldn’t be too concerning since only the top 50% of households by income own stocks (note that this isn’t quite true, with lower income households owning at anywhere from $2 – $3 trillion in stocks, which is not nothing). His main goal is to get long-term interest rates to fall, since that would help lower-income households who tend to have more debt service costs. (Note that an economic slowdown, or recession wouldn’t be great for this group either because that could mean they lose their jobs.)

There’s also been an argument that this whole exercise of imposing massive tariffs is to reduce interest costs for the federal government, which has to refinance $9 trillion of debt next year. In reality, the federal government always has a lot of debt to refinance because it issues a lot of short-term debt (which all of us happily purchase, including in money market accounts). However, the interest rate on that depends heavily on short-term policy rates determined by the Federal Reserve (Fed). And if you want the Fed to cut rates, policy that sends inflation the wrong way would not be the way to do it.

In any case, we may have a big problem on our hands. US Treasury interest rates are surging. The 10-year yield has surged to 4.45%, which is the highest level we’ve seen over the past month. On April 1st, the day before Liberation Day, the 10-year yield was at 4.17%. It fell as low as 3.92% as stocks plunged, before surging more than 0.5%-points over the last three days. That’s a massive move.



Is This China’s “Revenge”?
Yields rose sharply on Tuesday (April 8th) after a weak Treasury auction for $58 billion of short-term 3-year debt. There are rumors that this was China’s “revenge,” i.e. they’re selling US Treasuries in retaliation for tariffs. Let me be clear: this is just pure speculation without even a hint of evidence.

For one thing China does not own a lot of US Treasury debt anymore, just about $760 billion. If they were selling US debt, they would be selling USD and buying yuan, in which case we’d see major appreciation in the yuan. That’s not happening right now — in fact, the opposite. The PBOC (China’s central bank) set the yuan reference rate just above 7.2066, slightly weaker than the prior day’s level of 7.2038, and the fifth straight day of fixing the yuan lower. The yuan is now close to the lowest level in a decade and a half, with the PBOC carefully managing a gradual decline in their currency. Of course, this has the added effect of shielding the economy from tariffs, since it makes Chinese goods even cheaper (though they have a long way to go to overcome a 104% tariff).



A Dash for Cash
Instead, it’s likely due to portfolio managers at hedge funds liquidating positions. For one thing, cash is paying 4.3%, and so with the prospect of inflation (from tariffs), why would you want to take extra risk on long-term bonds? Inflation expectations over the next year, as measured by inflation swaps, have surged to almost 3.6%, which is the highest since mid-2022.



Several hedge fund strategies are also being unwound. There’s something called the “basis trade,” where funds use a ton of margin to take advantage of tiny difference in prices for Treasuries and associated futures. These are very small price differences and you need a huge amount of margin (about 50x) to make real money on it. Hedge funds were expecting Bessent to cut banking regulation this year, and one rule involved something called the “standard leverage ratio,” which makes it more expensive for banks to hold Treasury debt. These funds expected banks to start buying debt again and bet that Treasuries would outperform interest rate swaps (derivatives that are bets on yields). But because of tariffs, and rising inflation expectations, yields have risen, and banks are selling Treasuries instead. And so, interest rates swaps have outperformed Treasuries, forcing funds to delever (reduce margin) and unwind their positions. Oops.

The Fed’s Conundrum
A big part of what’s happening in bond land is the conundrum facing the Fed. Growth expectations are falling, best highlighted by crashing energy prices. WTI oil prices have plunged 20% over the last week to almost $56/barrel. At that price, we’re not going to get new drilling activity in the US, as oil producers need prices near $65/barrel to profitably dig new wells.



Lower growth expectations, or even a recession, should ordinarily lead one to expect the Fed to cut rates (and markets expect five cuts now in 2025). The problem is 1-year inflation expectations, as I noted above, have surged to 3.6%. That makes it very hard for the Fed to cut rates, even if inflation is “transitory.” In fact, Chicago Fed President, Austan Goolsbee, normally the most dovish member of the FOMC, just expressed concerns that inflation could be persistently high for a while — that’s not good.

The market coming to terms with the possibility that the Fed may not cut rates as much as they expect, or at all, could be the next shoe to drop. Of course, if there is a seizure in the Treasury market, like in March 2020 when Treasuries sold off rapidly as funds deleveraged, the Fed may step in to provide liquidity. But that’s different from cutting rates and supporting the economy overall with lower rates, unless their actions are taken as “forward guidance” for upcoming rate cuts. Color me skeptical on that. Now, if the unemployment surges, say to 4.6%, we could see a rate cut, but that would mean the economy is in real trouble. In any case, the Fed is not going to cut rates until they see poor data, which means they’re going to be behind the curve.

This is the problem when you have an inflation constraint — something that didn’t exist for most of the last 30 years. The big exception was in 2022, but the Fed was quite willing to throw the economy under a bus back then to get control of inflation, with Powell and co saying a recession is likely and projecting much higher unemployment rates.

A Weaker Dollar Creates Another Problem
One way to mitigate some of the inflationary impact of tariffs was a stronger dollar, as the current White House Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors, Stephen Miran, has suggested. However, given the magnitude of the tariffs, this was always going to have a minimal effect.

The problem is that the dollar has been going in the opposite direction. It’s been easing this year, with the dollar index down 5.5% year to date. It’s also pulled back almost 2% since April 1, the day prior to Liberation Day. That’s not good, as it makes imports even more expensive.



When people ask me what’s the difference between an emerging market (EM) and developed market, I tell them that my market-oriented perspective is that a country is an EM if the following happens during a crisis:

• Stocks fall
• Sovereign government bond yields rise
• Currency falls

We now have this exact environment in the US. Even in March 2020, as equities crashed, and Treasury yields rose briefly (before the Fed stepped in), the dollar was appreciating. That’s not the case now.

The only way to explain these moves is that investors, and the rest of the world, has lost confidence in America and is no longer flocking to the traditionally perceived safety of the US dollar and Treasuries. These now have a significantly higher risk premium and may no longer be “exceptional.” This is not to say markets won’t recover — they could (but we’re going to need to see a reversal from the White House for that). But going forward the usual expected correlations between different parts of an investment portfolio — US stocks, international stocks, bonds, cash, and even commodities — may need to be adjusted quite significantly.

Bounce Fails After 2-Day 10% Rout Wait for Fatter Pitch

Good news. Six months from now this tariff tantrum should be behind us. But the history of these crashes is not the kind of company we’d like to keep. All previous instances occurred during bear markets, recessions and/or war.

The first three occurred during The Great Depression. Two revolved around WWII, one at the outset and the other during the aftermath. One was the Crash of Black Monday on October 19, 1987. Two came two weeks apart in November 2008 during The Great Financial Crisis and the last one was in March 2020 at the beginning of Covid.

This too shall pass. But it’s not likely over yet. We are waiting on let’s make a deal with China, rate cuts from the Fed, volatility to dry up and the selling pressure to be exhausted. If you could put away your phone and turn of the TV for six months, it probably wouldn’t be a horrible idea. The time to buy over the next several weeks and months will present itself. For now, sit tight and keep your powder dry, the bear has reared its head and recession is quite possible.


15 Things All Investors Need To Know


“It is about time in the market, not timing the market.” Old investment saying

As of now, the S&P 500 has avoided officially entering a bear market (down 20% from the February 19th closing high), but who knows, by the time you read this we might be there. I’ll take a different approach today and look at some big picture things that all investors need to know.

Stocks Can Go Up on Bad News
A lot of bad things have happened since 1900, yet the Dow has continued to move back to new highs after every single one of them. The truth is a lot of good things have happened throughout history too, but we usually don’t hear so much about those. As bad as the reaction has been to “Liberation Day” we don’t think this will be any different than the other bouts of bad news, as some day in the future new highs will very likely happen.



Bear Markets Happen, Even Outside of Recessions
The S&P 500 is down more than 17% from the February 19th peak, so we are one bad day away from moving into a new bear market. Does this mean a recession is right around the corner? As of now, we think we can avoid a recession this year, but the odds have unquestionably jumped the past few weeks. Still, looking at the past 18 bear (or near bear) markets we find that nine took place in a recession and nine didn’t, with the average bear down nearly 30% over those 18 times. The times a recession was avoided stocks fell about 24%, compared with bears in a recession down nearly 35% (but keep in mind that doesn’t include the times a recession didn’t see a bear market, which happens too). If we aren’t falling into a recession then the odds favor that this current weakness will be fairly contained near here.



Big Moves Are Normal
Looking at annual returns, when the S&P is positive it is up 19.0% on average, but when it is lower it averages down nearly 14% for the year. Those are some big moves. Think about that again. When stocks finish higher on the year they are up nearly 20% on average, likely way more than most investors expected I suspect. The flipside is when things are in the red a decline of nearly 14% is perfectly normal, so larger down years might not happen as often but they indeed can happen.



Average Isn’t So Average
Along the same lines as above, the average year for the S&P 500 gains 9.5% on average, but a gain around that average is extremely rare. In fact, only four times going back 75 years have stocks finished 8-10%. Just know that larger moves are quite common, whether those moves are up or down.



Corrections Are Normal
The current 17.6% correction sure feels like a lot, especially given we didn’t have a 10% correction all of last year, but it turns out this is more common than you think. Since 1980, we found the average peak-to-trough correction per year is 14.0%. Yes, this year has a long way to go and things could get worse, but don’t forget that with more time to go things could also get better.



Another Bear Now Would Be a Record
By the time you read this, we very well could be in another bear market, which would be the third bear market over the past five years. That would be the fasted we’ve ever seen three bear markets start, topping the just under seven years we saw for three bear markets starting from February 1966 to January 1973.



Volatility Is the Toll We Pay To Invest
If you’re read our blogs over the past few years, then this one shouldn’t be a big surprise. Yes, this year hasn’t been fun, but we like to say that volatility is the toll we pay to invest. Every single year will have some bad days and some scary headlines. In fact, on average you’ll see a 10% correction once a year, with a bear market every three and a half years. If you want the longer-term gains that stocks historically provide, you have to be willing to stomach some of the volatility and that is the toll we pay as investors.



February Peaks Are Rare
Can stocks really get back to new highs before this year is over? We get it, that would take a heck of a move, but we wouldn’t say the odds are as slim as many think. Should we get some good news on the trade front and the economy remans resilient it could happen. Then toss in the fact that only twice going back 75 has stock peaked in February and maybe we could see a new high later this year.



There Were Warning Signs
We noted this at the time, but the Eagles winning the Super Bowl was probably a very bad sign, as when the City of Brotherly Love wins a Super Bowl or World Series very bad things happen. Sure enough, ever since the Eagles won in February thing have been pretty bad. Full disclosure, don’t invest based on the Super Bowl, but boy oh boy this is interesting!



Rough Start for Trump 2.0
Speaking of bad returns, things haven’t done nearly as well in President Trump’s second term, or as I’ll call it Trump 2.0. The S&P 500 is down 15.6% since he took office and looking at the past 33 terms this is the fifth worst start out of all of them. Yes, there is plenty of time left for this to improve, but still, this isn’t a good start.



VIX 50 Is a Good Sign
The VIX soared to above 60 yesterday morning, hitting levels that historically have marked major bottoms for stocks. We’ll keep this simple, but when the VIX hits 50 for the first time in a month it has probably been preceded by poor performance driven by panic, likely suggesting better times are coming. In fact, the S&P 500 has gained more than 20% on average a year later after the VIX spikes above 50.



Adding to the pure washout levels of sentiment, the CNN Fear & Greed Index hit a level of three yesterday morning, about as low as it can go, suggesting many of the sellers have likely already sold.



Valuations Matter, but Maybe Not as Much as You Think
We absolutely pay attention to valuations and the high valuations on technology is one of the reasons we didn’t come into 2025 overweight this group like so many others. Still, you might be surprised to find out there is virtually no correlation with P/E multiples and future stock performance over short time periods. We found S&P 500 trailing P/E multiples and one-year future returns have a correlation coefficient of virtually 0, suggesting there is no correlation between the two.



Time in the Market
Our advantage as investors is time. Let the hedge funds and algos fight over the day-to-day volatility, we can take a longer-term approach to things. Doing this shows that it isn’t about timing the market, but about time in the market. Yes, you’ve likely seen portfolio losses the past seven weeks, but if you have a long enough time horizon and you’re invested in line with your risk tolerance you were prepared to weather the storm for the potential of longer-term gains. As we show below, over the long run you’ll likely make money investing and knowing this is the big advantage you have over the crowd.



Missing the Best 10 Days
Along the lines of above, if you panic and sell at the lows then you’ll miss out on the rebound. We’ve done the work and we’ve found that the worst days of the year happen right around the best days of the year. So if you can’t take the bad days we’ve seen lately and sell, you’ll inevitably miss the upcoming best days on the rebound, which is very difficult to time. Here we show what happens if you miss the 10 best days of the year and the bottom line is since 2000 the average year has gained 9.8% but that drops to -12.5% if you miss the best 10 days each year.



Double Digit Down Years Are Rare
The S&P 500 is down 13.9% on the year and no one is very happy about that, but does that mean the year will close down from here? As of now, we think the odds greatly favor stocks to finish the year higher than where they are now, likely a good deal higher with any good news. In fact, for the year to lose 10% it usually takes some really bad news. As you can see in the table below, double digit yearly declines nearly always have a major catalyst and we’ve only seen four of them since the turn of the century. Yes, tariffs could be the driver for this to happen this year, but time will have to tell there. For now, we’d side with a double-digit decline in 2025 likely being a low probability event.



There’s a lot happening out there and we know you can get your research from many places, but we are honored you are looking to us for guidance. We won’t always be right, we won’t always be wrong, but we will always be honest, while sharing actionable and easy to digest data. Thanks for reading and here’s to manifesting some green out there soon!

Biggest Jumps in Dividend Yields
Tue, Apr 8, 2025

While the tariff situation has created a great deal of uncertainty and stock prices have crashed in tow, one silver lining is that dividend yields have at least ticked up. Currently, the S&P 500's dividend yield of 1.64% is the highest it has been since November 2023. For the average member that pays a dividend, it has seen a 33 bps increase in its yield, up to 2.58%. Additionally, there are 59 S&P 500 members that now have a higher yield than the 10-year Treasury. Of course, the impact of tariffs could materially impact earnings and hence their ability to pay a dividend at all, but holding that conversation aside, below we show the S&P 500 members that have seen the largest increases in their dividend yields since the sell-off began on February 19. Of all members of the index, there are 34 to have seen a full percentage point increase in their yields as a result of the declines since the S&P's high. The largest increase has come from Dow (DOW) which now yields over 10% after falling over 30% since 2/19. That is also the single highest yield of all S&P 500 members. Of the rest of the list below, there are another five stocks that now rank in the top ten highest yields: LyondellBassell (LYB), Pfizer (PFE), Franklin Resources (BEN), APA Corp (APA), and United Parcel Services (UPS).

Country ETFs since "Liberation Day"
Mon, Apr 7, 2025

Since President Trump's second term began with the Inauguration on January 20th, the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) is down 16.5% compared to a 6.2% drop for the all world ex US ETF (CWI). A ten percentage point gap in performance in less than three months is significant. It's early, but the rest of the world is solidly beating US markets so far under Trump 2.0.



Below is a table showing the performance of 45 country ETFs available to US investors since the close last Wednesday just before the President's Rose Garden announcement of reciprocal tariffs that were orders of magnitude higher than the market expected.

The average country ETF is down exactly 10% in the two and a half trading days since Trump's "Liberation Day," and the only two down less than 5% are India (INDA) and Turkey (TUR).

Of the G7 countries, the US (SPY) has been the third worst with a drop of 11.2%. The UK (EWU) and Italy (EWI) are down more at -13.3%, while Germany (EWG), Japan (EWJ), Canada (EWC), and France (EWQ) have fallen a little bit less than the US.

Norway (ENOR), Greece (GREK), Poland (EPOL) and China (MCHI) are the four country ETFs down more than 14% since last Wednesday's close, while Vietnam (VNAM) -- a country punished with a 45% tariff even though they only tariff the US roughly 5% -- is down a tad less than SPY with a drop of -11%.



Rollercoaster
Mon, Apr 7, 2025

Late last week and over the weekend, there were multiple predictions calling for more volatility. For instance, CNBC's Jim Cramer drew parallels with "Black Monday". Most investors probably haven't even had lunch yet, but already it's looking like a session for the history books. As we noted in a post on X, there have already been multiple mid-single-digit swings in both directions. As shown below, with the declines the S&P 500 (SPY) briefly dipped into bear market territory which we discussed the implications of in last Friday's Bespoke Report.



Again, it's not even noon but the opening move in addition to the declines last week has been enough to earn accolades. For starters, SPY has now had negative downside gaps (open lower than the prior day's close) nine sessions in a row. Since SPY began trading in the early 1990s, there have only been four other such streaks. The most recent streaks were clustered around 2015 and 2016 while the other occurrence was way back in January 1995.



Not only has there been such consistency to the downside at the open, but the moves have been very large. For four straight sessions now, SPY has gapped down at least 1% which is a new record. Within that streak was a 1.05% decline last Wednesday, a 3.4% drop Thursday, a 2.4% decline Friday, and a 3.2% decline today. The only other streaks of 1% gaps down that even lasted for three days occurred in September and December 2008 and later in March 2020.



As noted earlier, there have already been some wild swings intraday. As a result, the intraday trading range has blown out to epic proportions, and again, it's not even lunchtime. As shown below, today's intraday high-low spread for SPY has been 8.58%. In the ETF's entire history, there have only been 20 other trading days with as wide of a range. The most recent of these before today was during the COVID Crash. The China currency devaluation in August 2015 was another relatively recent example of a huge intraday range although it wasn't quite as big as today, and before that, there were multiple instances around the time of the Great Recession, July 2002, August 1998, and October 1997.

 

Here are the percentage changes for the major indices for WTD, MTD, QTD & YTD in 2024-



S&P sectors for the past week-

 

Here are the current major indices pullback/correction levels from 52WK highs as of week ending 4.11.25-


Here is also the pullback/correction levels from current prices


Here are the current major indices rally levels from 52WK lows as of week ending 4.11.25-

 

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Here are the upcoming IPO's for this week-

 

Stock Market Analysis Video for April 11th, 2025
Video from AlphaTrends Brian Shannon


ShadowTrader Video Weekly 4/13/25
Video from ShadowTrader Peter Reznicek

 

StocksForumers! Come join us on our stock market competitions for this upcoming trading week ahead!-

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StocksForums Weekly Stock Picking Contest & SPX Sentiment Poll (4/14-4/18) <-- click there to cast your weekly market direction vote and stock picks for this coming week ahead!

Daily SPX Sentiment Poll for Monday (4/14) <-- click there to cast your daily market direction vote for this coming Monday ahead!

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It would be pretty sweet to see some of you join us and participate on these!

I hope you all have a fantastic weekend ahead!

 

And finally here is the most anticipated earnings calendar for this upcoming trading week ahead-
($NFLX $TSM $UAL $APLD $GS $BAC $UNH $C $ASML $AA $HBAN $JNJ $USB $ABT $AXP $IBKR $PNC $RF $MTB $PGR $JBHT $TRV $OZK $ACI $TCBI $DHI $CSX $HWC $KMI $HOMB $ALLY $TFC $HOFT $ERIC $FITB $PLD $FBK $KEY $SLG $MMC $FR $FNB $INFY $REXR $EQBK $SCHW $RENT $BX $MOV $BANR)


If you guys want to view the full earnings post please see this thread here-

• Most Anticipated Earnings Releases for the week beginning April 14th, 2025 <-- click there to view!

 

Top of the morning StocksForumers! Happy Monday to all of you and welcome to the new trading week and a frrrrrrrrrrrresh start. Here is a quick check on those futures as we are over an hour into the US cash market open.

GLTA on this Monday, April the 14th, 2025!

 

Here are today's economic calendar events:

 

Here are today's analyst stock upgrades & downgrades:

 

Here are this morning's pre-market earnings results:

 

Morning Lineup - 4/14/25 - Exempted (Maybe)
Mon, Apr 14, 2025

If you were hoping that April’s volatility would calm down this week, you will have to wait at least another day. However, bulls will find today’s volatility to be much more tolerable since it’s to the upside. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq are indicated to open over 1% higher while treasury yields are lower, crude oil is higher, and gold is marginally lower. It’s a much more ‘normal’ picture this morning than many days we saw last week. Friday evening’s news that smartphones, semis, and other electronics would be exempt from reciprocal tariffs has tech stocks flying, and nowhere is the strength more notable than in Apple (AAPL), which is trading up over 5% in the premarket.

Talk about a roller coaster. After peaking just after Christmas, shares of AAPL lost more than a third of their value in less than four months and have since recovered more than 23% when you consider this morning’s gains. Volatility of this magnitude is notable when it occurs in just about any stock, but this is the largest company in the world we’re talking about. Are we really to believe that the company’s value has fluctuated by this magnitude in such a short period?



With today’s 5% rally in the pre-market, AAPL is on track for its second straight daily gain of over 4%. Since the iPod was launched in 2001, the only other time the stock had a higher number of consecutive 4%+ daily moves was in October 2008 when there were three in a row. The current streak of back-to-back gains, if it holds, would be the first such streak since coming out of the Financial Crisis, but before that, they were common as the market cap was much lower.

 

Here is a final look at today's market and futures maps, as well as how each sector performed individually at the close on Monday, April 14th, 2025.

 

Top of the morning StocksForumers! Happy Tuesday to all of you and welcome to the new trading day and a frrrrrrrrrrrresh start. Here is a quick check on those futures as we are over an hour into the US cash market open.

GLTA on this Tuesday, April the 15th, 2025!

 

Here are today's economic calendar events:

 

Here are today's analyst stock upgrades & downgrades:

 

Here are this morning's pre-market earnings results:

 

Morning Lineup - It's Over - 4/15/25
Tue, Apr 15, 2025

It's over. No, not the tariff tantrum, but the 2024 tax season. If you've somehow forgotten to get your taxes done (or file for an extension), you've got a few more hours left!

While the S&P 500 is down 12% from its highs after making a series of lower lows, the index's cumulative advance/decline line - which is simply a running sum of the daily number of advancers minus decliners - has held up very well. As shown below, even after the post-Liberation Day market crash, the cumulative A/D line remained above its December lows.