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The Wall Street rout continues. All of the major indexes (^DJI, ^GSPC, ^IXIC) opened sharply lower after China announced it will put a 34% tariff on US goods. Morning Brief Anchor Julie Hyman and Markets and Data Editor Jared Blikre break down the action at the open.
To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Morning Brief here.
That is the opening bell. Let's do a check of the markets on what looks to be another day of deep selling based on now what is the second day of overhang from President Trump's tariff announcement. And now the news this morning that China is imposing 34% tariffs on US imports into that country. So, expecting to see more selling today. Uh, the Dow off 960 points here out of the gate. We should mention, of course, we also got a jobs report this morning, which showed 225,000 jobs added to the US economy. So we saw a better number than expected, but nonetheless, still seeing the Dow take a hit here because the emphasis does remain on the tariffs. The S&P 500 down 2 and a half%, the Nasdaq down 3%. And I want to take a quick look at some of the two-day numbers as well, just to show the depth of the selling that we've seen over two days. The Nasdaq down 8.7% over the past couple of days. The S&P 500 down 7% over the past few days. Jared Blickery watching the opening action, although I know Jared, you're also going to be focusing closely on what happens at the end of the session as well.
Yes, exactly, Julie, because a lot of times after the payroll report, we get an initial move and then we kind of zigzag a bit, with the end effect that we reverse into the close. Doesn't always happen, but it happens enough that we should be cognizant and maybe hope for that possibility. So, as you were leaving off on the two-day here, I'm going to mention stocks are in the midst of their worst two-day slump since the pandemic, and many stock indices and sectors and individual stocks had their worst day since the pandemic yesterday. A few more stats, Nasdaq just had its first 1,000 point sell-off yesterday, and the Russell 2000, the small caps, I'll pull that up on the screen with the two-day. That has fallen into a bear market as of yesterday, and also the Dow Transports, the Dow Transportation Index. So here, the Dow Transports down 11 and a half%, and they've been a leading indicator. Don't talk about them all the time, but they have been important to watch, and they've been leading down. Here's the VIX. I was tracking this earlier up to 37. Let me just check the high here. It's 45.56. That is pretty elevated, not quite the highs that we saw in Yenmageddon last year in August, and that was kind of a one-off event. But my problem with the volatility readings is they just seem really comfortable hanging out at these elevated levels. Here's a 10-year T-note yield. That is down 15 basis points. Over the last two days, it is down 27 basis points. That is just a jaw-dropping amount, and we can see this is easily the lowest levels of the year. You have to go back to September, October of last year to find that comp. And let's skip over to see what's happening in sectors, and everything in the red here. Energy leading to the downside, and utilities less bad off than the rest, and so is staples. Some of those defensives, not as bad as the rest, but still getting sold off. I think it was staples that was in the green yesterday, and you can see over these last two days now, it's exactly flat. Energy is down 11.3%. I'm going to get to crude in a bit, but first I want to go to the Nasdaq 100 so we can see what the Mag 7 are up to. And there's a roundhill Mag 7 ETF that is had its worst day ever yesterday. And you can see the carnage today. Let me just flip that over to a two-day again so you can see some of the moves that we're talking about. Apple down 3% this morning, so is Nvidia, meta, and Amazon down 5%, and the two-day total is going to look worse if they punch up here. Uh, looks like doesn't want to cooperate, so I'm going to move on to China. China has been a bright spot, but unfortunately, and this is a two-day, there is the Nasdaq 100 showing Apple down 12%. But here's China. This is showing a lot of red, and this is important because China has been a green spot. It has been a bright spot this year, and we're finally seeing some carnage this morning. Yesterday wasn't bad, looking a lot worse today. So maybe this is a global risk off move that we are in right now. Got to go over to futures so we can check out the movements in crude oil. Crude oil is selling off the most since 2022, another story of a big two-day tumble. This is the overnight price action. I'll show you the year to date so you can see how it's just kind of fallen off a cliff here. There's your, there's your cliff line there. And if I put a one-year chart, you can see, or maybe not. I'll try to get a longer one there. When's the last time we were at these levels? It's been quite a while. It hasn't been even three years. So 61.75, you're looking for lower gas prices, that's a good thing. But I don't think the Fed, J. Powell over at the Fed has any additional reason today looking at this report to say we got to cut. So that could be an issue for the markets.