U.S. Stocks Fall, Wiping Out More Than $3 Trillion in Market Value
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What triggered the recent U.S. stock market plunge?
U.S. stocks plunge, losing more than $3 trillion in market value. Plus, why amid a market sell-off, investors are turning to consumer staple stocks. And what a weaker dollar means for the U.S. 's economic future.
What investors are realizing today is that the growth prospects of the U.S. are deteriorating.
It's Thursday, April 3rd. I'm Alex Osola for The Wall Street Journal. This is the PM edition of What's News? The top headlines and business stories that move the world today. U.S. stocks have suffered their biggest single-day wipeout in market value since the COVID route in March 2020. Dozens of household name stocks posted double-digit declines, including HP, Nike, and Target. The U.S. dollar sank, oil and gold both fell, and investors dashed for the safety of treasuries. The decline sets up financial markets for one of their most precarious periods in recent years, as the tariffs and the international reaction test the faith investors used to stick with stocks. The Dow fell more than 1,600 points, or about 4%. The S&P 500 slid about 5%.
And the Nasdaq was down more than 1,000 points, ending the day roughly 6% lower. All in all, U.S. stocks have lost roughly $3.1 trillion in market value. For more, I'm joined by WSJ Markets reporter Hannah Aaron Lang. Well, Hannah, what a day it's been for the markets. What happened here today?
It's fair to say that today was kind of a bloodbath for markets. We certainly got hints that that was coming. Stock futures started to turn lower last night after President Trump's speech. But this was really quite a dramatic day. We saw the S&P 500 fall a lot. We saw the Nasdaq notch its largest one-day point decline on record. Treasury yields fell. The dollar fell.
How did President Trump's tariff plan affect the markets?
So there was turmoil in almost every corner of the market. And of course, what's driving this is professional investors and businesses just scrambling to adjust their plans and their strategies in response to what one analyst called a worst of the worst case scenario when it comes to the president's tariff plans.
I mean, there's so much that happened and so many things were affected, but I'm curious what stood out to you.
This is something we've been monitoring for a while, but it was definitely cast in very stark terms today. The Magnificent Seven, these large cap tech stocks that were on top of the world for a while. They suffered some really big losses today. The Roundtail Magnificent 7 ETF that tracks all of those as a group, it was down about 7%. Amazon and Apple were some of the biggest losers, around 8% or 9% losses today. But also, I was just really surprised by the depth and breadth of these losses. As I mentioned, there wasn't really a part of the market that wasn't touched by this at some point today.
Okay, lots of pain for investors today. Is it over now? What happens next?
Today might have been more intense than the days to come. This was the initial reaction, investors grappling with this plan that was much more severe than they had anticipated. But what I'm hearing from the sources that I talk to, whether they're professional portfolio managers or just investors, individual investors, is that this volatility, these up and down days seem to be something that's going to stick around just because of the potential impact of this plan. So this is definitely not the end of the effects that we're going to see from this plan. And unfortunately, not the end of what I expect will be continued volatility for investors as well.
That was WSJ reporter Hannah Aaron Lang. Hannah, thank you for being here.
Which stocks are considered safe during market sell-offs?
Thank you so much for having me.
Amid today's broader sell-off, some stocks fared better than others. I'm joined now by WSJ reporter Stephen Wilmott. Stephen, what kinds of companies saw their stock price rise today?
In the European trading morning, we got, for example, the drinks makers Diageo and Campari. Their stocks rose because there had been fears that their Mexican tequila imports to the US, which account for quite a dominant chunk of the US businesses these days, would be hit by tariffs because of the current exemption for US MCA compliant goods.
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Chapters
4 chaptersSpeakers
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