The S&P 500 retreated on Monday, extending February’s rout and turning red for the year after President Donald Trump’s confirmation of forthcoming tariffs ratcheted up economic concerns.
The S&P 500 fell 2.1%, bringing its year-to-date performance to a loss of nearly 1%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 789 points, or 1.8%. The Nasdaq Composite slid 3%, weighed down by Nvidia’s decline of more than 9%.
All three indexes traded higher earlier in the session, with the Dow at one point up nearly 200 points. Stocks took a notable leg down in afternoon trading following Trump’s reiteration that 25% levies on imports from Mexico and Canada would go into effect on Tuesday, dashing investors’ hopes of a last-minute deal to avert the full tariffs on the two U.S. allies.
I’d also add not to mistake inadvertence for planned action, or vice versa.
Let’s not forget, this was the administration that named the wrong official as acting FBI director and, rather than fixing their mistake, just went with it and let that guy run things for a few weeks.
It could be that they want to tank the markets so that their people can buy things for cheap. But I also wouldn’t trust their competence or planning to do it in a way that the cheap thing recovers in value.
People make the comparison to Crassus’s fire brigade, where he’d buy homes on the cheap that were already on fire, then use the brigade to put the fire out. But imagine someone who tries to do this with an incompetent fire brigade, where they buy houses on fire and then fail to contain the fires, so that they end up losing even more. That analogy might be more on point with this administration.