Stock Market Today: May 12th - 16th, 2025

Welcome to the trading week of May 12th!

Dow drops more than 100 points Friday as investors await U.S.-China trade talks: Live updates



The Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped on Friday as investors awaited much-anticipated trade talks between U.S. and Chinese officials this weekend.

The 30-stock Dow lost 119.07 points, or 0.29%, and settled at 41,249.38. The S&P 500 inched down 0.07%, closing at 5,659.91. The Nasdaq Composite ended the session little changed, ending at 17,928.92.

The talks with Chinese officials follow the U.S. and United Kingdom reaching a preliminary trade deal. Investors hope this will lead to more agreements being reached quickly. That said, a 10% tariff rate on the U.K. appears to be the baseline for the globe.

“Many Trade Deals in the hopper, all good (GREAT!) ones!,” said Trump on Truth Social, a day after announcing a preliminary trade agreement with the U.K., which marked the first deal between the U.S. and a global trading partner since Trump’s “reciprocal” tariff announcement in early April.

The president also wrote on Truth Social that an “80% Tariff on China seems right” ahead of talks led by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent with China counterparts in Switzerland this weekend.

While this is a de-escalation somewhat from the current 145% tariff on China, it’s still higher than many expected where the administration would go to jumpstart talks. Bloomberg News had reported earlier that the rate could be lowered below 60% as soon as this week. It was also unclear if the president is talking about a long-term tariff rate on China or a temporary one during negotiations.

“Progress this week was encouraging, but we remain in the ebbs and flows of the news cycle, which is causing market reactions. We are likely in a sideways period of volatility until we begin to get tangible (calculable) outcomes,” said Mark Hackett, chief market strategist at Nationwide.

On the week, the S&P 500 slid about 0.5%, while the Nasdaq dropped roughly 0.3%. The Dow fell almost 0.2% in the period.

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:

 

Typical Post-Election Year May

Post-election year May historical performance is impressive when compared to the recent 21-year trend. Early strength has lasted until around the sixth trading day with average gains exceeding 1%. A brief period of weakness has occurred between the sixth and ninth trading days, but afterwards the trend has been briskly higher through the end of May.

Should the market track the more bullish post-election-year May seasonal patterns, the major indexes could be pushing through their respective 200-day moving averages sometime after mid-month.

About Last Month


“It is human nature to overestimate risk and underestimate opportunity.” Jeff Bezos, Executive Chairman and Former CEO, Amazon

What an end to April, and May is off to a strong start as well. In fact, the S&P 500 finished higher the last seven days of April, trying the longest win streak to end that month ever. It didn’t end there though, as stocks gained the first two days of May too, for an incredible nine-day win streak, the longest since November 2004.

How Large Was April’s Reversal?
In the end, the S&P 500 fell less than 1% in April, but it was anything but easy for investors. In fact, during the second week of April stocks were down more than 20% intraday off of the February peak, causing historic worry and bearishness. Just in April, the S&P 500 was down more than 11% for the month at the lows, but then managed to close up more than 10% off of those lows. The last time we saw a reversal anything like that was in March 2020 and the lows of the Covid bear market.

We found six other times the S&P 500 was down at least 10% in a month, but finished more than 10% off the monthly low. Potential weakness or choppiness is normal in the near term, but a year later stocks have never been lower, up more than 22% on average. As we discussed last week, there were multiple rare bullish signals and the lows for 2025 are likely in, but this doesn’t mean it will be straight up and some back-and-forth volatility would be perfectly normal.



Where Did the Bulls Go?
We’ve noted many times over the past month that sentiment in many cases was about as bearish as we’ve seen and that was potentially a bullish driver on any good news. Well, we saw the reversal last week, but we continue to see signs that overall sentiment is still quite dour, which again is bullish from a contrarian point of view.

Barron’s over the weekend released their latest Barron’s Big Money poll (which comes out in October and April) and it showed the most bears in the poll going back nearly 30 years! Compare this with six months ago when bulls were everywhere and the masses expected continued explosive growth for investors in the US, and sure enough that hasn’t worked, as the US is one of the very few stock markets this year that is down on the year. Well, here we are six months later and we view this complete 180 as another reason to expect potentially better times ahead.



When Do Nine-Day Win Streaks Happen?
Social media was abuzz that long win streaks (like we just saw) only happen during recessions or bear markets. Well, the good news is that simply isn’t true. It really upsets me that people with large followings simply lie, knowing it isn’t true, which leads many average investors to make poor investment decisions. All we can do around here is continue to share honest research, trying our best to combat those trying to sell a newsletter.

Here I found all the months that had a nine-day win streak for the S&P 500 and how often the strength occurred in a recession. Well, we were told this happens 80% of the time, but using the actual data showed only three times out of 29 did a nine-day rally take place in a recession. Be careful who you follow out there.



Another Clue the Lows Are in for 2025
The S&P 500 fell 18.9% from the February 19 peak to the April 8 lows, in what we are calling a near-bear market. Trust me, if you were there it sure felt like a bear market, as investors were battered and bruised for sure.

The good news is stocks have recovered half of that near-bear market, potentially a good sign. In fact, looking at the past 16 bear or near bear markets only once did stocks go on to make new lows after half of the bear market was recovered. Of course, that was the very last time, in 2022, but this is still a good sign. Lastly, a year later stocks were higher an incredible 16 out of 16 times after recovering half of the bear (or near bear) market.



Think about what we’ve seen in the last month:

• Widespread over-the-top negativity
• Strong buying thrusts (discussed recently)
• A historic reversal in April
• With some good news on the trade front sprinkled in

 

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 5.9.25-


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 5.9.25-

 

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Here are the upcoming IPO's for this week-

 

Stock Market Analysis Video for May 9th, 2025
Video from AlphaTrends Brian Shannon


ShadowTrader Video Weekly 5/11/25
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 (5/12-5/16) <-- click there to cast your weekly market direction vote and stock picks for this coming week ahead!

Daily SPX Sentiment Poll for Monday (5/12) <-- 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-
($RGTI $BABA $WMT $AMAT $CSCO $PLUG $ASTS $MNDY $JD $ACHR $KRMN $PNNT $IREN $NU $OKLO $CRWV $CAVA $GRAL $HTZ $BLNK $SE $SRAD $SMR $TMC $RMTI $PBR $MVST $NRG $GEVO $CYBR $DOCS $TTWO $SURG $EXEL $FOXA $BSEM $GAMB $HMC $NXT $MRX $LUNR $LAZR $CHGG $CSWC $CTMX $SPCE $SPRY $SDRL $DE $ZK)


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

• Most Anticipated Earnings Releases for the week beginning May 12th, 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, May the 12th, 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 - 5/12/25
Mon, May 12, 2025

US equity futures are up 3% pre-market on news that the US and China would be pausing tariffs for 90 days after meetings between the two in Geneva over the weekend.

As shown below, SPY is set to open above its March highs and back in positive territory since Election Day last November.



Stocks most dependent on China for cheap imports are soaring this morning. Below is a look at the pre-market moves for stocks in some of the "tariff losers" baskets we've highlighted in the last five weeks. Wayfair (W) is up the most at 16.2%, followed by RH (+15.6%) and elf Beauty (+10.2%). Best Buy (BBY), Yeti (YETI) and SharkNinja (SN) are all up 8%+ as well.

 

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, May 12th, 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, May the 13th, 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 - 5/13/25
Tue, May 13, 2025

The S&P 500 rose 3.26% to start the week, which was its biggest Monday gain since April 6th, 2020 when the index rose 7.0% on weekend headlines that the rate of COVID infections was slowing and lockdowns might start to ease.

Yesterday's rally was driven by an agreement between the US and China to pause steep reciprocal tariffs of 100%+ for at least the next 90 days. The best performing stocks yesterday were names that got hit the hardest during the post-"Liberation Day" crash from April 2nd to April 8th. The worst were the ones that held up best during the Trump-tariff crash. You can see this in the chart below that breaks the S&P into deciles (10 groups of 50 stocks each) based on performance from 4/2 to 4/8. The bars show the average performance yesterday of the stocks in each decile. The three deciles of stocks that did the worst during the tariff crash from 4/2 to 4/8 saw average gains of more than 5% yesterday. The 50 stocks that held up the best from 4/2 to 4/8 actually fell an average of 0.95% yesterday. This clearly highlights yesterday's rotation out of tariff resistant names into tariff exposed names.



It has taken a gain of more than 17% off the lows for the S&P 500 to finally tick back up into overbought territory: