The New York Stock Exchange clearly folded on Monday March 10, in particular the NASDAQ index, investors displaying their concerns about a possible recession in the United States. According to the Washington Postclimbing the Trump administration’s trade war has aggravated the fall of the Wall Street stock markets, despite the optimism displayed by the advisers of the American president.
In detail, the Dow Jones lost 2.08 %, the Nasdaq technological coloring index dropped by 4.00 %, its worst performance since 2022, and the enlarged S&P 500 index was contracted by 2.70 %.
Tech strongly affected
“Essentially, this is a liquidation of technological values”, evidenced by the strong decline in the Nasdaq index, which shows “that the high concentration of markets on major technological values can become a problem”, notes with AFP Steve Sosnick, interactive Brokers, an online brokerage company.
Tech sector giants fell sharply: Tesla dropped by 15.43 %, Meta fell 4.42 %, Microsoft of 3.34 %, alphabet of 4.41 %, Apple of 4.85 %, Amazon of 2.36 %and Nvidia by 5.07 %.
Donald Trump does not exclude a recession
“The market in recent days, and certainly today, has reassessed the benefit/risk balance”, facing “the confusion that reigns over customs duties” and fears of a slowdown in the American economy which could be added to increasing inflation, underlines Steve Sosnick. Investors in particular welcomed Donald Trump’s statements with fear.
The American president remained very vague when a Fox News journalist asked him during an interview if he expected a recession in the United States – a recession being defined as a decline in GDP in at least two consecutive quarters. “I hate predicting things like that,” he replied. “There is a transition period,” said the Republican billionaire, who has led his business partners since his return to the White House, started with his Canadian and Mexican neighbors.
Last week, the president has indeed set up customs duties of 25 % on all imports from Canada and Mexico, before backing up and “mitigating these plans so that they do not affect the products imported within the framework of the North American commercial pact concluded during the first mandate”, as explained by the Washington Post. Chinese products have also been added 10 % customs duties, and other measures could still occur on April 2.
Donald Trump Optimists advisers, but not banks
Asked about the CNBC television channel on Friday, the Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent judged that the American economy and the stock market would enter a “detox period” when they were “addicts to public spending”, which the administration promises to drastically reduce.
Quoted by the Washington PostKevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council of the White House, wanted to be reassuring by telling the CNBC channel on Monday that “what will happen is that the first quarter will go into the positive category, then the second trimester will take off as everyone will see the reality of tax reductions.”
On the other hand, according to the American newspaper, the investment banks Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase have lowered their forecasts of economic growth for the first quarter, due to the new customs tariffs and the overall uncertainty concerning the policies of the Trump administration. BNP Paribas, for its part, said it expected “sustainable damage to global economic activity” because of these customs duties.
On cnnDavid Bahnsen, director of investments in the Bahnsen group, reminded him that “the discourse on customs duties is, in many ways, worse than their implementation”, because “speculation and chaos only promote uncertainty.”
In parallel, market players carefully await the publication on Wednesday of the Consumer Price Index (ICC) in the United States for February. It will be one of the first economic data on the state of health of the American economy since Donald Trump’s return to power.