Energy sector hardest hit as oil tumbles
Energy stocks are the hardest hit sector in the S&P 500, falling more than 5% as oil keeps selling off on uncertainty over Trump’s trade war.
Occidental Petroleum and Devon Energy, tumbling more than 6%. Oil majors Exxon and Chevron fell about 2%. Refiner Phillips 66 was down nearly 4%.
U.S. crude oil has fallen more than 4%, tumbling back below $60 per barrel. The U.S. benchmark has given most of the gains from Wednesday’s relief rally on Trump’s decision to pause higher tariffs on most countries.
Traders have shifted focus to the escalating U.S.-China trade war after Trump hiked rates on the world’s largest crude importer to an eye-watering 145%.
— Spencer Kimball
An oil pumpjack is seen in a field on April 09, 2025 in Close City, Texas.
Brandon Bell | Getty Images News | Getty Images
U.S. crude oil prices tumbled back below $60 per barrel, after a sharp rally in the previous session on Trump’s decision to pause higher tariffs on most U.S. trading partners.
The U.S. benchmark was down $3.01, or 4.83%, to $59.34 per barrel, while global benchmark Brent traded lower by $3.03, or 4.63%, to $62.45.
West Texas Intermediate gave up the gains from Wednesday’s relief rally as traders shift focus to the escalating trade war between the U.S. and China. Trump has hiked tariff rates on China, the world’s largest crude importer, to an eye-watering 125%.
— Spencer Kimball
Most everyone is either bearish or bullish and hardly anybody’s neutral in their outlook on stocks these days.
Neutral sentiment toward stocks looking out over the next six months slumped to 12.5%, the smallest percentage since the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis in May, 2009, according to the latest weekly survey from the American Association of Individual Investors, which captured at least some small part of the reaction to President Trump on Wednesday suspending most of his planned tariff increases on major trading partners, apart from China.
Historically, almost a third (31.5%) of investors describe themselves as neutral in any given week.
Individual investors grew a little more bullish and a little less bearish in the latest week through Wednesday. Bullish views toward stocks over the next six months rose to 28.5% from 21.8% last week (the historical average is 37.5%), while bearish opinion eased to 58.9% from 61.9% (historic average: 31%).
This week’s 16-year high in neutral sentiment echoed last week’s 16-year high in bearish opinion among Main Street investors, when pessimism also reached its highest since 2009 and was the third-highest reading ever in the history of the survey, which dates from the 1980s.
— Scott Schnipper
Kansas City Federal Reserve President Jeffrey Schmid speaking at Jackson Hole on Aug. 22, 2024.
David A. Grogan | CNBC
Kansas City Federal Reserve President Jeffrey Schmid said Thursday he thinks policymakers will have to hone in on inflation threats rather than slower growth as they contemplate future moves in interest rates.
President Donald Trump’s tariffs are threatening to raise prices, though he postponed some of the most aggressive measures for a 90-day negotiation period. Normally, Fed economists see tariffs as a one-time bump in prices and not a fundamental inflation driver, but the current circumstances could be different, Schmid said.
“One enduring lesson of the high inflation period of the 1970s and early 1980s was that once inflation is embedded in expectations, it becomes much more difficult to contain,” he said in prepared remarks for a speech in his home district. “Now, with renewed price pressures likely, I am not willing to take any chances when it comes to maintaining the Fed’s credibility on inflation.”
Though he did not offer a specific course for rates, Schmid’s comments reflect sentiments of his fellow policymakers for a wait-and-see approach to how tariffs will hit the economy.
Schmid is a voting member this year on the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee.
—Jeff Cox
Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange during morning trading on April 10, 2025 in New York City.
Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images News | Getty Images
U.S. stocks kicked off Thursday’s session in the red.
The S&P 500 fell 2.1%, The Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 666 points, or 1.6%. The Nasdaq Composite declined 2.8%.
— Hakyung Kim
These are some of the stocks making notable moves before the bell:
- Big Tech — Megacap tech stocks pulled back following big runs during the prior session after President Donald Trump announced a pause on some reciprocal tariffs. Tesla slid more than 3% after multiple Wall Street firms cut their price targets on the electric vehicle maker. Nvidia also fell more than 3%.
- U.S. Steel — Shares sank 10.4% after Trump said he did not want the steelmaker to get in the hands of Japan, implying that he did not support Nippon Steel’s bid for the company.
- CarMax — Shares of the used car retailer tumbled 7.2% on the heels of weaker-than-expected earnings for the fiscal fourth quarter. CarMax earned 58 cents per share, missing the consensus forecast of analysts polled by LSEG by 7 cents.
— Alex Harring
Mannequins are displayed with Levi’s brand products in a store. The EU postpones the planned reintroduction of retaliatory tariffs on US goods worth billions by two weeks until mid-April.
Jens Kalaene | Picture Alliance | Getty Images
Bank of America analyst Christopher Nardone upgraded shares of jeans maker Levi Strauss to a buy rating from neutral in a Thursday note. Nardone accompanied the move by lifting his price target to $20 from $17, implying that shares of Levi Strauss could gain 34% from here.
“LEVI checks a lot of encouraging boxes: sales momentum coupled with a conservative revenue outlook, minimal China risk (sourcing and sales), an improving wholesale trajectory, a diversified supply chain, and a strong balance sheet,” the analyst wrote.
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump’s 90-day pause on tariffs is a positive for now, but Nardone believes that Levi Strauss is well positioned in the case of more trade war-induced volatility. The analyst clarified that the firm’s China production is “minimal.”
Shares of Levi Strauss have slipped 14% in 2025.
Stock chart icon
LEVI 1Y chart
These are some of the stocks making notable moves before the bell:
- Big Tech — Megacap tech stocks pulled back following big runs during the prior session after President Donald Trump announced a pause on some reciprocal tariffs. Tesla slid more than 3% after multiple Wall Street firms cut their price targets on the electric vehicle maker. Nvidia also fell more than 3%.
- U.S. Steel — Shares sank 10.4% after Trump said he did not want the steelmaker to get in the hands of Japan, implying that he did not support Nippon Steel’s bid for the company.
- CarMax — Shares of the used car retailer tumbled 7.2% on the heels of weaker-than-expected earnings for the fiscal fourth quarter. CarMax earned 58 cents per share, missing the consensus forecast of analysts polled by LSEG by 7 cents.
— Alex Harring
Carnival Adventure arrives into Sydney Harbour on March 28, 2025 in Sydney, Australia.
Matt Blyth | Getty Images
Morgan Stanley analyst Jamie Rollo upgraded cruise operator Carnival to an equal-weight rating from underweight. However, the analyst accompanied the move by lowering his price target to $21 from $25.
Shares of Carnival have shed 21% this year. Rollo’s updated forecast is approximately 7% above the stock’s Wednesday closing price.
Stock chart icon
CCL 1Y chart
“We upgrade CCL to Equal-weight given the risk-reward skew now looks fairer, and our Underweight thesis was based on a very different macro outlook,” the analyst wrote.
However, Rollo added that under a recession scenario, he would prefer to avoid the cruise industry altogether.
— Lisa Kailai Han
Barclays believes that Danaher‘s fundamental business model remains resilient, despite the stock being “priced to perfection.”
Analyst Luke Sergott upgraded the life sciences stock to an overweight rating, but lowered his price target to $205 from $240.
Shares of Danaher have slipped 16% this year. Sergott’s updated price forecast still implies that the stock could gain 7% from its Wednesday close.
Stock chart icon
DHR 1Y chart
“Valuation is still expensive, but not as offensive as it was 6 mos ago for the growth expected,” the analyst wrote. “While we do not see a ton of valuation upside in the current environment, we do think that the Dx stability and the Biopro momentum is enough to offset any Life Sci weakness to the point where we do not see as much downside to out-year estimates as we do with other Tools companies.”
— Lisa Kailai Han
People stand in front of an Apple store in Beijing, China April 9, 2025.
Tingshu Wang | Reuters
Apple retreated 3.1% Thursday before the bell.
On Wednesday, the stock soared 15.3% after President Donald Trump announced the 90-day tariffs pause on several trading partners.
Shares were up around 5.6% as of Wednesday’s close, reversing their earlier declines with Wednesday’s rally.
Stock chart icon
Apple shares on Thursday
The European Union said Thursday it will halt retaliatory tariffs on U.S. products for 90 days, mirroring another 90-day pause announced by President Donald Trump on Wednesday that sparked a massive market rally.
— Fred Imbert
Men stand in front of an electronic stock quotation board inside a builidng in Tokyo, Japan April 8, 2025.
Issei Kato | Reuters
Asia-Pacific markets rose Thursday, following Wall Street’s biggest burst of buying since 2008 after U.S. President Donald Trump announced a 90-day pause on higher tariffs on all nations bar China.
Japanese markets led gains in the region. The benchmark Nikkei 225 closed 9.13% higher at 34,609 while the broader Topix index advanced 8.09% to 2,539.40.
South Korea‘s Kospi index surged 6.60% to close at 2,445.06 while the small-cap Kosdaq gained 5.97% to 681.79.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 rose 4.54% to end the day at 7,709.60.
Mainland China’s CSI 300 rose 1.31% to end the day at 3,735.32 while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index added 2.06% to close at 20,681.78.
India markets were closed for a holiday.
— Amala Balakrishner
European shares saw a huge rally at the open on Thursday, with the regional Stoxx 600 index jumping 7% by 8:23 a.m. in London.
Germany’s DAX was 7.5% higher, while banking stocks, up by more than 10%, led sectoral gains.
— Chloe Taylor
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks, as he signs executive orders and proclamations in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., April 9, 2025. REUTERS/Nathan Howard
Nathan Howard | Reuters
President Trump folded on his tariff policy Wednesday “under market pressure” and the bond market in particular, according to Capital Economics chief North America economist Paul Ashworth.
Trump resisted the stock market decline, but “once the bond market began to weaken too, it was only a matter of time before he folded on his eye-wateringly high tariffs,” the Toronto-based economist wrote to clients Wednesday.
“Our working assumption now will be that, cowed by the market response, Trump will repeatedly extend the ‘pause,’ meaning that this will end up looking a lot like the 10% universal tariff that he campaigned on,” the note said. Neither the U.S. nor China are likely to back down in coming days, and a full rollback to the level of tariffs before Inauguration Day is unlikely, although talks between the two nations will happen. Ashworth, who began at the London-based researcher in 2001, thinks the effective tariff rate on China is likely to settle at about 60%.
Partly as a result, and even allowing for the deflationary impact of lower oil prices, “we assume U.S. inflation will now peak at 4% or so,” Capital Economics wrote, or double the Federal Reserve’s 2% target. “U.S. GDP growth should be 1.0% to 1.5% annualized over the next 4 quarters.”
— Scott Schnipper
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said on “Fast Money” that the selling in financial markets over the past week was “absolutely not” a factor in the tariff pause on Wednesday. Earlier in the day, before President Trump announced the change, the S&P 500 had fallen to just above its bear market threshold, while the 10-year Treasury yield briefly traded above 4.5%.
CNBC’s Melissa Lee also asked Lutnick if U.S. companies could be confident in the direction of policy going forward. The Commerce chief responded that firms should carefully consider their exposure abroad and predicted upcoming announcements of companies building products in the U.S.
“I think it’s important for companies to understand that the countries they do their business in matter. If you do business in China, or you do business with a country that basically is just a proxy China, then you’re going to have to deal with the fact that President Trump does not think we are being treated correctly,” Lutnick said.
— Jesse Pound
Case of Modelo, a beer imported from Mexico, are seen for sale at a grocery store in Arlington, Virginia, February 3, 2025, following the announcement of tariffs by US President Donald Trump on important goods from Canada and Mexico.
Saul Loeb | Afp | Getty Images
Shares of Constellation Brands fell more than 3% in extended trading Wednesday after the Modelo owner’s full-year forecast missed analysts’ expectations.
The company expects to post comparable earnings of $12.60 to $12.90 per share for fiscal 2026, while analysts surveyed by LSEG were anticipating $13.97 per share for the period.
Earnings and revenue for its fiscal 2025 fourth quarter came in better than expected, however.
Stock chart icon
STZ, 1-day
— Sean Conlon, Amelia Lucas
A screen displays a trading chart on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City after the White House announced a 90-day pause & lowered 10% reciprocal tariff for other countries, U.S., April 9, 2025.
Brendan Mcdermid | Reuters
Small-cap stocks got a much-needed bounce Wednesday after President Trump announced a 90-day pause on some U.S. tariffs. The Russell 2000 surged 8.7% to end the day at 1,913.16, marking its biggest one-day advance since March 24, 2020. That day, it rallied 9.4%.
Stock chart icon
Russell 2000 rallies
S&P 500 futures were relatively unchanged Wednesday evening after stocks saw monumental gains following President Donald Trump’s tariff reprieve.
Shortly after 6:00 p.m. E.T., futures tied to the S&P 500 were about 0.1% higher, while Nasdaq-100 futures fell about 0.2%. Futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 57 points, or 0.1%.
— Sean Conlon
