Stock Rally Stalls on Conflicting Tariff Signals
A solid week on Wall Street is ending on a quieter note, with stocks churning as investors digested the gains of the past few sessions amid conflicting signals on whether the US-China trade spat is de-escalating.
The S&P 500 wavered on speculation the world’s two largest economies won’t set aside their differences so quickly. As Donald Trump’s rapidly shifting tariff war continued to dominate sentiment, a mixed bag of corporate earnings didn’t do much to provide solace to traders. Bonds and the dollar rose.
Investors are looking for signs that Washington and Beijing will engage to lower tariffs, but relations appear to still be at a standstill.
Trump told Time magazine he expects to wrap up trade deals with US partners looking for lower tariffs in three to four weeks. But the president gave confusing signals about the status of talks with China, even as China has denied that negotiations are taking place.
China on its part is considering suspending its 125% tariff on some US imports, people familiar with the matter said, as the economic costs of the tit-for-tat trade war weigh heavily on certain industries.
“We are currently in tariff purgatory,” said Joachim Klement, strategist at Panmure Liberum. “There is no fundamental change to the outlook, so markets latch on to noise and get constantly whipsawed by the ever-changing utterances of Donald Trump and his cabinet.”
The S&P 500 was little changed as of 9:30 a.m. New York time
The Nasdaq 100 was little changed
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.2%
Source : Bloomberg
