US stocks (^DJI, ^GSPC, ^IXIC) closed higher on Wednesday as a tariff relief rally boosted equities. Yahoo Finance Markets Reporter Josh Schafer breaks down the takeaways of the trading day, including signs Trump is softening on tariffs and how sentiment around the "sell America" trade has shifted.
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The stocks closing higher as investors hope for a de-escalation on the US trade war with China. Yahoo Finances Josh Shaver joins us now with the trading day takeaways. Hey, Josh.
Hey, Julie. Yes, so I think one of the key takeaways from the past 24 hours is it seems like President Trump is starting to feel the market action a little bit. That's what Neil Dutta over at Renaissance Mac called it or Renaissance Mac called it. And I think overall, you're just seeing that in the market action. We had several strategists say that to us on air today, too. So really what I want to do is maybe zoom out to a five-day look on some of these stock indexes here, and what you can see, when did it feel like President Trump may be switched, right? We started to get back below 5100 in the S&P 500. You take a look at the 10-year yield, which we know they like to follow very closely. What had been happening to the 10-year recently? If we go maybe out a little bit further, 10-year had really picked up, right? And so you started to just see these moves in the market that it doesn't seem like the administration likes that much. All of a sudden, we went from a weekend where everyone's talking about the president wants to fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell to him just coming out and saying, "I I never said that. I don't want to do that." And so kind of just a pure flip realistically, right? And then you guys were just talking after hours here, we've had some repeal and potential exemptions in auto tariffs. So it just seems like the administration is starting to maybe take the foot off the pedal a little bit, and we're trying to figure out what levels it is in the market that that's happening, but it certainly seems like it's happening to some extent.
And so today, we saw the the sort of flip from Sell America to Buy America, at least for today.
Yes, at least for today. And Julie, I think this one's interesting, especially I'm going to go to a year-to-date on the 10-year, right? So this whole Sell America thing that we've been talking about, I get it, right? Of course, bond yields have been moving higher. That means that people aren't buying bonds, right? They're selling treasuries. The dollar has been going lower, of course, again, Sell America. The equity market, when we look at what was happening with stocks, it was all red. Well, it was green today. But overall, we didn't get that high in the 10-year, right? We weren't even at the high of the year, right? So I think just maybe a little bit overblown in what we were making of the action. I get that it comes together as one story, but I don't think what strategists were saying when they're calling it Sell America, I don't think they're saying get out of US equities. They're maybe saying you should rebalance your portfolio maybe a little bit or maybe there's opportunity elsewhere, but not necessarily that we're done with US assets or we're done with US assets to be a little bit blunt.
No, but I think there was some question about who was doing this selling and why they were doing this selling, right? And we were seeing enormous single day moves in the 10-year treasury that are unusual, right? And so and again, if you look at the dollar, see similar move there. So it's not so much that I mean, I haven't talked to any strategist, I'm sure you haven't either, who says liquidate all of your US equities, right? That's not really what it's about. But it's about if you have an administration that is trying to fundamentally change the trade paradigm for the globe, then that's going to create some real disconnects in the market.
Right. Yeah, and and then you you felt that shake in the markets, right? And I think the other thing that's interesting with the dollar, too, let's not forget how far up we moved in the Trump trade that was the good Trump trade, right? When markets were ripping higher and look at how much the US dollar strengthened, and then when you put it out on a two-year, it's kind of just sitting where it was two years ago. And so I think again, yes, dollar significantly weaker than it was, of course, but is it weak weak yet? I'm not really sure we've gotten there. So I guess in terms of Sell America, I kind of want to see a little bit more of this action play out to maybe be a little bit more convinced.
I'm going to look at this one in particular since we were talking earlier about a European vacation. Yeah, not so much.
I'm not going on vacation to Europe now. I gotcha. I gotcha. Thanks, Josh.
