Friday’s stock market slide will likely cement the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite’s seventh weekly decline in nine weeks.
The S&P 500 was down 1.8%, putting it down more than 1% on the week. The Nasdaq Composite was down 2.5% and about 2.3% on the week. The Dow was down 650 points, bringing its weekly decline to 0.8%.
“Any month-end rebalance flows are being overrun with de-risking ahead of the April 2nd tariffs,” writes BTIG Chief Market Technician Jonathan Krinsky. “It’s possible we now see a ‘sell the rumor, buy the news’ after April 2nd, but looking purely at the technicals and not the potential news flow, SPX looks to have risk back towards recent lows around 5500.”
The S&P 500 and Nasdaq entered correction territory earlier this month as Wall Street reacted to weakening sentiment data. The Trump administration’s unpredictable tariff threats have also hampered recent attempts to buy the dip.
Andrew Brenner, head of international fixed income at NatAlliance Securities, argues unpredictability about what tariffs may come next are leading to fear in stocks and the economy.
“We watched Peter Navarro, the person behind the Trump tariffs, and he really believes that tariffs will force manufacturing back to this country … maybe in 10 years, but to what disastrous consequences in the mean time,” Brenner writes.