The US president has flagged Wednesday as “Liberation Day,” and pledged to impose additional sweeping levies against trading partners, without providing additional details about his plans.
Amid the uncertainty, volatility surged in early trading on Monday, with the CBOE Volatility Index, colloquially known as Wall Street’s “fear gauge,” jumping more than 10 percent before cooling sharply as the day progressed.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average reversed an earlier decline to close up 1.0 percent at 42,001.76, as did the broad-based S&P 500 Index, which gained 0.6 percent to 5,611.85.
The tech-focused Nasdaq Composite Index fell 0.1 percent to 17,299.29.
Despite the resurgence, the S&P posted its worst quarter since 2022.
“I think [traders] were taking advantage of an oversold situation,” CFRA’s Sam Stovall told AFP.
“They still have another day in which to sort of play around,” before Trump’s big tariff announcement, Stovall added.
Among individual stocks, Moderna fell 8.9 percent after the departure of a top US Food and Drug Administration official who disagreed with Trump’s new health secretary, noted vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (AFP)
