Yahoo Finance

The S&P 500, 500 fell more than 10% in three days following President Trump's, quote-unquote, liberation day tariff announcement. The decline was one of the worst stretches we've seen since World War II. For more, we bring in Yahoo Finance markets reporter, Josh Schafer, who has been looking at the story through the charts.

Yes, surely. So our first chart is going to be that historical reference that you just made, right? So taking a look at some of the biggest drawdowns in history over a three day period. So what stands out on your screen at the top there, within the same period, but that would have been Black Monday where the S&P 500 fell over 20% in a three day period. Some other key dates stand out there, you see the Great Financial Crisis, the COVID pandemic, and again, Black Monday. Then, when you flip to the screen that has our recent selloff, you can see Trump's tariffs are actually at the bottom at 10.73% selloff. But again, we're talking about this level of selling off being at the level of the Great Financial Crisis, the COVID pandemic, and Black Monday. These are some of the worst days in market history. So, it just puts a little bit of perspective of sort of the breath of selloff that we're talking about. Speaking of breath, another chart I brought here is looking at stocks trading below their 200 day moving average. So, stocks that are below their average price over the last 200 days. I was looking at this with our friend, Jared Blikre, and you can see how that has just tumbled, right? And I think over the past couple days, you guys have probably had strategists say this, I've certainly had sources tell me this, you've seen sort of correlation go to one, right? Everything's getting sold off. We're going to sell off everything and ask questions later. I think this is one of those charts that helps sort of explain that. Everything's trading below its 200 day moving average. It doesn't matter if you're Nike and you have clear exposure to tariffs, or you're another company where there isn't a lot of tariff exposure. You're just seeing a little bit of chaos right now. I'll feed my last chart with chaos. I highlighted yesterday's market action, we could also use today's market action for the examples. But right now, what you're seeing is just clearly a market that is moving on every tariff headline, and yesterday, you saw that in about a 15 minute span, with an 8% swing in markets across 15 minutes, pretty crazy.

And then today, you had another swing that was, not in the same compressed time, but I think it was a 6% swing today in the S&P 500 from the highest to the lowest.

Yeah, so to bring up Jared Blikre, our great friend, of course, our data editor, he ran the numbers, that's three straight days, the S&P 500 has swung about 6% or more. So that goes back to last Friday. Again, it just gives you the feeling of, it's, it's not just, you're looking at crazy headlines, and you feel crazy, and it feels like the market's moving, it's really moving. We were up 4% at the open today, referencing the S&P 500. I think we closed down more than 2%. I mean, the swings are real right now. They're aggressive, and I do think that's why you're hearing some folks come on air and say, you know, maybe don't just jump back into this market, maybe have a little bit more of a react feeling right now.

I was going to ask you about that, as you read through the strategist notes, which I know you do, beautifully, is anybody saying buy here? Is anybody saying back up the truck?

I don't think so, Josh. I think what a lot of people want to hear is a little bit more clarity on, I mean, still we've been saying this forever, but a little bit more clarity on exactly where we're landing with tariffs here, and they want the flow of headlines to stop. Like, I think it's just a tough environment to say, "Back up the truck, I want to go shopping right now."

Or aside from the fundamental issue, your point remains policy uncertainty.

Right. And then I think Keith Lerner from Truist made a great point about this yesterday, we got earning season coming up, right? Earnings start on Friday, and I thought Keith's point that it's not necessarily what companies say, he wants to see how stocks react to what companies say. We've had all this selling off, we clearly have expectations that earnings won't be great, and companies are going to be talking badly about tariffs, but is that priced into the market? And we're going to get a good feeling for that over the next couple weeks as well.