Wall Street powered to its second best weekly advance of 2025 on Friday, with the S&P 500 jumping nearly 5%. After wobbling on Monday, markets staged a four day rally as sentiment was boosted by Donald Trump significantly dialing back his aggressive rhetoric against Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and China.
On the economic front, US consumer sentiment fell to one of the lowest readings on record and long term inflation expectations climbed to the highest since 1991 on worries over the domestic consequences from tariffs.
The first quarter earnings season this week was decidedly mixed – a 71% plunge in quarterly net income by Tesla, a solid performance from Google, a quarterly loss from Boeing, and a dismal quarter from Intel. And there is more to come in the next few weeks. For the week, the S&P advanced 4.6%, while the Nasdaq jumped 6.7%. The Dow climbed 2.5%
Future Wealth’s View
If you want to look at challenging times to invest, look no further than the tweets from Trump that roiled markets and cause unnecessary volatility. This week, it was Trump calling the Fed Chair a “major loser” and then reversing it a few days later. The markets plummeted on the first tweet and struggled to recover losses on the second. Later in the week, it was his comment that a deal with China was in the works and that Xi Jinping had called and talked to him. China denies a conversation with the Trump administration and says there was no call made by Xi Jinping. Again, the markets rose on the prospect of a rollback on the tariffs with China, only to see it lose momentum later. And then, there was the tweet that Russia and Ukraine have agreed to a ceasefire brokered by Trump. Russia promptly bombed Kyiv the very next day. In an atrocious act that violated all forms of civil diplomacy, Trump tweeted to Putin – “Vladimir, STOP!”. And the shelling on Ukraine continued. After humiliating Zelensky in the White House last month, Trump has switched sides and now supports Ukraine against Russia.
For investors, consumer sentiment is declining, earnings season is not going well and Trump is controlling the narrative. We simply do not believe these are times to take risks in the stock market. We remain in safety across all our client portfolios and are more inclined to look at opportunities outside of the US.