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Stock market today: Dow, S&P 500, Nasdaq futures pare losses as markets weigh Trump, Dimon comments
- With US stocks set to sink for a third day on Monday, President Trump posted on social media calling for the Fed to cut rates as markets tumble and some on Wall Street begin calling for the US economy to tip into recession this year.
- “Oil prices are down, interest rates are down (the slow moving Fed should cut rates!), food prices are down, there is NO INFLATION, and the long time abused USA is bringing in Billions of Dollars a week from the abusing countries on Tariffs that are already in place,” Trump said on his social media platform, Truth Social.
- “This is despite the fact that the biggest abuser of them all, China, whose markets are crashing, just raised its Tariffs by 34%, on top of its long term ridiculously high Tariffs (Plus!), not acknowledging my warning for abusing countries not to retaliate.”
- The President’s sweeping retaliatory tariff announcement last week sparked a sell-off in stocks. China announced 34% tariffs against US imports in retaliation to Trump’s levies.
- Nasdaq futures were sinking on Monday morning after sliding into a bear market last week, while the S&P 500 was also lower after losing more than 10% over a span of two days.
- Oil prices also sank more than 2.5% on Monday, extending its losses of 11% last week.
- Global stocks tumbled on Monday morning with the Hang Seng China Enterprises (^HSCE) index, tumbling more than 13%. The Japanese Nikkei 225 entered a bear market on Monday as it closed 7.8% lower, bringing its losses since a December high to 23%.
- Stocks in Europe slumped to levels not seen in well over a year as Trump’s tariff push left investors in no mood to take risks.
- The pan-European Stoxx 600 benchmark (^STOXX) fell almost 4.3% to its lowest level since January 2024, coming off session lows that saw it slide as much as 6.5%.
- All sectors on the Stoxx 600 pulled back, with defense names leading the decline as investors sold big recent gainers such as Rheinmetall (RHM.DE, RNMBF). The bank, energy, and insurance sectors also took a hit.
- “There’s just a general sense of panic,” said Daniel Murray, Zurich-based chief executive officer of EFG Asset Management told Bloomberg. “Everything is getting killed, even good companies that will likely fare relatively well.”
- Germany’s Dax (^GDAXI) dropped 4.4%, while the CAC 40 (^FCHI) in Paris slid 4.6%. London’s FTSE 100(^FTSE) retreated 3.8%.
- An increasing number of Wall Street strategists are flipping their stance on stocks in 2025 as stock sell-off in reaction to President Trump’s latest tariff announcements.
- On Sunday night, Oppenheimer chief investment strategist John Stoltzfus cut his year-end S&P 500 target to 5,950 from 7,100. Stoltzfus had entered 2025 as the most bullish strategist on Wall Street.
- “While our expectations are for cooler heads to prevail in the trade negotiation process that’s likely to follow last week’s tariff regime announcements the market’s reactions and percentage of recent declines in some individual stocks (as well as among major equity indices) suggests to us a need to right size expectations in the near term,” Stoltzfus wrote.
- With futures tied to the major indexes all down more than 3% again ahead of Monday’s market open, Stoltzfus noted that a “negative pitch book” has taken hold among investors. That pitch book, Stoltzfus wrote, “seemingly projects negative outcomes to infinity.”
- Amid the massive sell-off that’s pushed the benchmark index down more than 17% from its most recent all-time high on Feb. 19, Julian Emanuel, who leads the equity, derivatives, and quantitative strategy team at Evercore ISI, also lowered his year-end S&P 500 target to 5,600 from 6,800 previously.
- Evercore is now one of three equity strategy teams tracked by Yahoo Finance that has reversed course from seeing a positive return for the S&P 500 to projecting a negative year for stocks as Trump’s hefty tariffs ripple through the stock market.
- Emanuel wrote that prolonged policy uncertainty has already raised asset volatility and hit the confidence of both consumers and businesses. Eventually, Emanuel believes continued uncertainty that’s already weighed on survey data like consumer confidence could trickle into other economic data points. This would result in either stagflation, where inflation increases and growth slows, or an “outright recession.”
- “Investors, CEOs and Consumers dislike uncertainty,” Emanuel wrote.
- Stocks in Asia tanked on Monday to close near levels not seen in some cases since the 2008 global financial crisis, with the Hang Seng Index (^HSI) the hardest hit.
- The Hong Kong gauge closed 13.2% lower to notch its worst daily loss since 1997 and to erase all its gains for 2025 so far. Meanwhile, the Hang Seng China Enterprises (^HSCE) index, which lists companies such as Alibaba (BABA, 9988.HK) and BYD (BYDDF, 1211.HK), tumbled 13.7% as shares of all its components fell.
- Meanwhile, the CSI 300 (000300.SS) index in Shanghai sank 7%, as an “element of panic selling” hit stocks, according to a Janus Henderson strategist.
- In Taiwan, the Taiex pulled back 9.7% to book its worst day since 1990 as Apple suppliers TSMC (TSM, 2330.TW) and Foxconn (2317.TW) took a hit.
- The Nikkei 225 entered a bear market on Monday as it closed 7.8% lower, bringing its losses since a December high to 23%.
- The fast-moving slide in stocks during the session prompted a circuit-breaker in trading, per The Wall Street Journal.
- The last time the Japanese blue-chip benchmark was in a bear market was in August, when the Bank of Japan’s surprise interest-rate hike sent shockwaves through markets.
- Concerns about the impact of the trade war on Japan’s industries and broader economy are mounting. The country’s prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba, will speak with President Trump on a call later Monday, according to reports.
- JPMorgan believes the US economy will enter a recession in the back half of 2025 as the impact of President Trump tariffs takes hold in the economy.
- The firm’s chief US economist Michael Feroli sees a two-quarter recession occurring in the back half of 2025 as GDP contracts by 1% in the third quarter of the year and by 0.5% in the fourth quarter. For the full-year 2025, Feroli’s team projects GDP will fall by 0.3%.
- “We now expect real GDP [gross domestic product] to contract under the weight of the tariffs,” Feroli wrote in a note to clients on Friday night.
- Feroli added that a “recession in economic activity” will push the unemployment rate up to 5.3%. New data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics released on Friday showed the unemployment rate stood at 4.2% in March. While other economists have noted the risks to recession are rising, JPMorgan marks the first major Wall Street research team to forecast a recession as Trump’s tariffs weigh on economic growth.
- “The pinch from higher prices that we expect in coming months may hit harder than in the post-pandemic inflation spike, as nominal income growth has been moderating recently, as opposed to accelerating in the earlier episode,” Feroli wrote. “Moreover, in an environment of heightened uncertainty consumers may be reluctant to dip too far into savings to finance spending growth.”
- Some of President Trump’s prominent backers in the business community are sounding the alarm on his rollout of reciprocal tariffs and the resulting market fallout.
- Outspoken billionaire investor Bill Ackman, who endorsed the president last July following the assassination attempt on Trump, said in a lengthy post on X late Sunday that, barring Trump calling a “time out” on his tariffs plans, we could be headed for an “economic nuclear winter.”
- “The President has an opportunity on Monday to call a time out and have the time to execute on fixing an unfair tariff system,” Ackman wrote.
- “Alternatively, we are heading for a self-induced, economic nuclear winter, and we should start hunkering down.
- “May cooler heads prevail.”
- In his post, Ackman argued the US is “100% behind the president on fixing a global system of tariffs that has disadvantaged the country.”
- “But,” Ackman added, “business is a confidence game and confidence depends on trust.”
- On Sunday evening, stock futures were pointing to a third day of sharp losses after the S&P 500 (^GSPC) fell over 10% across Thursday and Friday’s trading sessions, while the Nasdaq (^IXIC) entered a bear market.
- Trump’s reciprocal tariff announcements on Wednesday, dubbed “Liberation Day” by the White House, surprised investors and exceeded most Wall Street forecasts. Initial estimates put the combined tariff rate on all US imports well north of 20%, which would be the highest in over a century.
- Wall Street strategists have slashed their forecasts for the stock market in response to Trump’s tariff plan and at least one firm has called for the US to enter recession this year as a result.
- Ackman said Trump’s rollout of these tariffs has set in motion a “process of destroying confidence in our country as a trading partner, as a place to do business, and as a market to invest capital.”
- Instead, Ackman is calling on Trump to institute a 90-day time out to begin negotiations on “unfair asymmetric tariff deals, and induce trillions of dollars of new investment in our country.”
- “If, on the other hand, on April 9th we launch economic nuclear war on every country in the world,” Ackman wrote, “business investment will grind to a halt, consumers will close their wallets and pocket books, and we will severely damage our reputation with the rest of the world that will take years and potentially decades to rehabilitate.
- “What CEO and what board of directors will be comfortable making large, long-term, economic commitments in our country in the middle of an economic nuclear war?
- “I don’t know of one who will do so?”
- Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday, President Trump said sometimes you have to take medicine when asked about the market’s recent sell-off, according to Reuters.
- The president added that his policies were not intentionally trying to engineer a market sell-off.
- “I don’t want anything to go down, but sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something,” he said.
- Trump’s comments come as markets appeared set to begin the week where they left off Friday, with US stock futures down sharply across the board with Nasdaq 100 futures off more than 4% and futures tied to the Dow and S&P 500 both off more than 3.4%.
- Last week, the Nasdaq closed in a bear market and the S&P 500’s losses reached 17% from the benchmark index’s record high hit back in February.
- This weekend, Trump’s economic surrogates attempted to make clear in media appearances that the president’s shock tariff announcements last week were not a negotiation tactic.
- Speaking Sunday evening, the president said no deal on tariffs with China would be forthcoming unless the US’ trade deficit with China was fixed. The US’ trade deficit with China reached $295 billion last year.
- Trump added that he has spoken to leaders in Europe and Asia regarding his tariffs unveiled last week.
- In China, investors braced for a tough day as markets reopened after an extended weekend, absorbing the impact of Beijing’s retaliatory tariffs on US goods.
- A gauge of Chinese stocks listed in the US plunged 8.9% on Friday, reflecting fears of further trade tensions. The Hang Seng China Enterprises Index, (^HSCE) one of the year’s top performers, has begun a sharp pullback, dropping 9.4%
- Meanwhile, the Nikkei 225 (^N225) fell nearly 8%, putting it at its lowest levels since 2023.
- China’s swift tariff response, following President Trump’s tariff hike on the country, raised global recession fears. Goldman Sachs downgraded its targets for Chinese equity indices, with the MSCI China (CHH=F) Index target cut to 81 from 85.
- Read more here.
- TOKYO (Reuters) – Oil prices fell more than 3% on Monday, extending losses from the previous week, on growing concerns that a global trade war could slow the global economy and weaken oil demand, following China’s retaliation against U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs.
- Read more here.
- Our tariff live blog has been running throughout the weekend, and it has a lot of the context you need to know heading into the trading week.
- The key theme is that Trump administration officials struck a defiant tone on the president’s tariff plans. A sampling, per our accounting:
- See the latest updates here.
- Bitcoin (BTC-USD) plummeted Sunday, putting it on track to test levels from before the election, which sent the token on a rip-roaring rally in the final months of last year.
- At last check, the cryptocurrency was trading around $78,600 per token, which puts it just above year-to-date lows.
- Ethereum (ETH-USD) saw an even more intense plunge, down around $1,600 per token, its lowest point since late 2023.
- Futures tied to the major indexes were all down around 4% as trading opened Sunday night:
