Thursday, March 13, 2025

Stocks Tumble Into Correction as Investors Sour on Trump

THE NEW YORK TIMES: The S&P 500 is now more than 10 percent below its last record high — a line in the sand for investors worried about a sell-off gathering steam.

The world’s most widely followed stock-market benchmark slid into a correction on Thursday, a drop that underscores how the two-year-long bull market is running out of steam in the early days of the Trump administration.

The move stems from investors’ growing pessimism about the whipsawing policy pronouncements from Washington over the past few weeks. On-again, off-again tariffs and mass layoffs of federal workers have fomented unease on Wall Street.

On Thursday, the S&P 500 fell 1.4 percent. After weeks of selling, the index is now down 10.1 percent from a peak that it reached less than one month ago and is in a correction — a Wall Street term for when an index falls 10 percent or more from its peak, and a line in the sand for investors worried about a sell-off gathering steam.

Other major indexes, including the Russell 2000 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite, had already fallen into correction. On Thursday, the Nasdaq fell 2 percent, while the Russell 2000 index of smaller companies, which tend to be more exposed to the ebb and flow of the economy, was 1.6 percent lower. » | Joe Rennison and Danielle Kaye | Graphics by Karl Russell | Thursday, March 13, 2025

Why ever did investors and electors believe that Donald Trump knew how to manage the economy? In his working life, he declared business bankruptcy at least four times (click here and here for details), practising on himself first. Now, he's putting the expertise he has gained to use, practising on us. Now, he wants to make the country bankrupt instead! You can't say you weren't warned. Enjoy the rough and bumpy ride! Have plenty of tablets to hand for motion sickness! You're going to need them. This is just the start. Nearly four more years to go of this – at least. – © Mark Alexander