Stocks rise worldwide and S&P 500 adds 2% as hopes for tariff negotiations deliver some relief
NEW YORK (AP) — Some relief is flowing through financial markets worldwide Tuesday, and stocks are rising to recover a bit of their historic losses since President Donald Trump dramatically raised the stakes in his trade war last week.
The S&P 500 was up 2.4% in midday trading, though it still remains more than 15% below its record set in February. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 926 points, or 2.4%, as of noon Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 2.4% higher.
The bounce was global, and stock indexes rallied 6% in Tokyo, 2.5% in Paris and 1.6% in Shanghai. But even with Tuesday’s jump, which could be the S&P 500’s best since late 2022, analysts say more swings up and down are likely for financial markets not only in the days ahead but also perhaps the hours.
The S&P 500 had been up as much as 4.1% earlier Tuesday before more than halving its gain. The price of crude oil, which had climbed in the morning, also slid to bounce between modest losses and gains as the day progressed.
The big question remains centered on how long Trump will keep his stiff tariffs on other countries, which would raise prices for U.S. shoppers and slow the economy. If they last a long time, economists and investors expect it to cause a recession. But if Trump lowers them through negotiations relatively quickly, the worst-case scenario can be avoided.
Hope still remains on Wall Street that negotiations may be possible, and Trump said Tuesday that a conversation with South Korea’s acting president helped them reach the “confines and probability of a great DEAL for both countries.”
“Their top TEAM is on a plane heading to the U.S., and things are looking good,” Trump said on social media. “We are likewise dealing with many other countries, all of whom want to make a deal with the United States.”
Japanese stocks led global markets higher after the country’s prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba, appointed his trade negotiator for talks with the United States. It was based on an agreement between Ishiba and Trump, Japanese officials said.
It “seems like we were very oversold and there’s hope that things may de-escalate from here,” said Sameer Samana, a senior global market strategist for Wells Fargo Investment Institute, He, though, also suggested staying cautious “as the key countries continue to escalate, rather than de-escalate.”
China said it will “fight to the end” and warned of countermeasures after Trump threatened on Monday to raise his tariffs even further on the world’s second-largest economy.
Trump’s latest set of tariffs are scheduled to kick in after midnight, the country’s top trade negotiator, Jamieson Greer, said in testimony before a Senate committee Tuesday. He also said Trump has been clear that he does not intend to have any exemptions or exclusions in the tariffs.
The U.S. trade representative said roughly 50 countries have already been in contact, and he’s told them: “If you have a better idea to achieve reciprocity and to get our trade deficit down, we want to talk with you, we want to negotiate with you.”
Trump’s trade war is an attack on the globalization that’s shaped the global economy and helped bring down prices for products on store shelves but also caused manufacturing jobs to leave for other countries. Trump has said he wants to narrow trade deficits, which measures how much more the United States imports from other countries than it sends to them as exports.
A bounce back for global markets such as Tuesday’s perhaps shouldn’t be a surprise. Stocks don’t go in one direction forever, and some of the best days in the market’s history have been clustered around some of its worst days.
The biggest gain for the S&P 500 since World War II was an 11.6% surge on Oct. 13, 2008, for example. That was during the depths of the Great Recession, when worries were high that the financial system was collapsing and the S&P 500 was in the midst of a nearly 57% plunge from its peak in late 2007 until its bottom in March 2009. A couple weeks later, the index had another one of its best days in history, soaring 10.8%.
That’s one of the reasons many financial advisers suggest not trying to time the market and selling stocks and other investments meant for the long term when nervous, because of the risk of missing out on such huge up days.
On Wall Street, health insurers helped lead the market after the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced a stronger-than-expected increase in Medicare Advantage payments for next year. Humana jumped 10.8%, United Health climbed 6.6% and Elevance rose 3.4%.
In the bond market, Treasury yields rallied for a second straight day to recover more of their sharp losses from prior months. The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.20% from 4.15% late Monday and from just 4.01% late Friday.
Yields tend to rise with expectations for the U.S. economy’s strength and for inflation. ___ AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.