Since Trump took office, stocks are down and bitcoin has plunged. What’s going on?
CNN
Investors entered the New Year cheerful about the prospects of a business- and crypto-friendly Trump administration. Yet two months into 2025, US stocks have lagged Europe and Chinese stocks, bitcoin is sliding and concerns about inflation are mounting.
Investors entered the New Year cheerful about the prospects of a business- and crypto-friendly Trump administration. Yet two months into 2025, US stocks have lagged Europe and Chinese stocks, bitcoin is sliding and concerns about inflation are mounting. US stocks slid Tuesday as investors digested a poor outlook from a consumer confidence survey that showed heightened concern about inflation. The Conference Board’s consumer confidence index saw its largest monthly decline since August 2021. The Dow wavered Tuesday morning, sliding 0.2% after opening higher. The benchmark S&P 500 was down by around 0.75% by midday and the Nasdaq Composite fell 1.5%. US markets are fretting as signs of lingering inflation are on the rise and uncertainty around President Donald Trump’s trade and tariff policy persists. Investor sentiment on Tuesday moved into extreme fear territory for the first time since December, according to CNN’s Fear & Greed Index. The VIX, Wall Street’s fear gauge, surged 10% on Tuesday to its highest level this year. The S&P 500 has closed lower three sessions in a row, and all three major US stock indexes are in the red since Trump took office on January 20. The tech-heavy Nasdaq is down almost 2% since the start of 2025. As investors brace for uncertainty, they are likely moving away from stocks into safer assets like government bonds and dumping risky assets like cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin, which surged as high as $106,000 around Trump’s inauguration, is down about 17% in the past month, trading around $87,000 on Tuesday.
US stocks rallied Friday as investors tried to stage a rebound to finish a rocky week, though all three major indexes were still on track to close the week in the red.
Gold prices reached $3,000 an ounce for the first time in history Friday, boosted by demand for safe-haven assets as investors fret about President Donald Trump’s tariffs and geopolitics.
The Trump bump in consumer sentiment is now a Trump slump.
On-again, off-again tariffs, mass government layoffs, funding cuts and immigration crackdowns have seriously spooked Wall Street, which is emphatically rejecting President Donald Trump’s chaotic economic agenda.
For craft brewers, an industry largely consisting of small businesses and where the product is made in steel plus packaged in aluminum, the newly applied tariffs are having a direct strike on their bottom lines.
President Donald Trump has said that automakers can avoid his tariffs by simply moving production to American plants. But it’s not that easy. Not by a long shot.
China has sharply criticized a proposal to sell ports in the Panama Canal to American asset management giant BlackRock, attacking the deal as “spineless groveling” and a “betrayal” of the Chinese people.
Bill Pulte, who was confirmed by the US Senate on Thursday to lead the Federal Housing Finance Agency for the Trump administration, said he’s in no rush to privatize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage behemoths that power more than half of America’s mortgages.
Tesla, the electric car company run by Elon Musk, said this week that retaliatory tariffs against US manufacturers could harm its operations and that the US should carefully consider its trade policies, a break from Musk’s ally President Donald Trump.
US stocks slid Thursday and the S&P 500 entered into correction territory, down 10% from its record high in February, as President Donald Trump threatened new tariffs on the European Union.
President Donald Trump on Thursday threatened to impose a massive tariff on European alcohol in response to the European Union’s retaliation against his steel and aluminum tariffs – a tit-for-tat escalation of a trade war that could easily get out of hand.
The Producer Price Index, a wholesale inflation gauge that is being closely watched for tariff-related impacts, showed that price hikes slowed substantially in February.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told lawmakers in a Congressional hearing last January that it didn’t make sense for his platforms to verify how old their users are in order to serve them age-appropriate experiences. Instead, that responsibility should lie with app stores, he said.