May 9, 2025

 

Market Highlights 

 

We started April with sharp declines in the market. The dramatic selloff over April 3rd and 4th followed President Trump’s announcement of sweeping new tariffs, sparking heightened fears of a global trade war. On April 3rd the S&P dropped 4.8%, the Nasdaq 5.97% and the Dow 3.98%. On April 4th, China announced retaliatory tariffs triggering another 5.5% drop in the Dow and nearly 6% in the S&P and Nasdaq. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq experienced their worst weekly performances since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

Despite the declines and subsequent volatility, the market recouped nearly all of its April losses by the end of the month, after posting seven consecutive days of gains. Following an 11.2% month-to-date drop on 4/8 and an 11.8% rally from that point through the end of month, the S&P finished the month down just 0.8%. The Nasdaq Composite ended the month up 0.9%. The S&P is still down year to date 7.8%. While uncertainty and headline risk remain a common theme amongst many analysts, during a turbulent month the major indices have shown resilience.

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Of the asset classes we follow, the best performing one for the month was Developed Foreign Stocks (MSCI EAFE) with a 4.2% return. The worst performing was Commodities (Bloomberg Commodity Index) with a -5.1% return.

 

S&P groups similar companies into 11 sectors; when we dig into the S&P 500's performance, we find that 5 of the sectors were up, 6 were down, 1 was down by more than 5%.

 

The best performing sector was Information Technology with a 1.6% return. The biggest contributor to this outperformance was Microsoft Corp, which is the third largest stock in the sector and had a return of 5.3%. The second best performing sector was Consumer Staples with a 1.1% return. The biggest contributor to this outperformance was Walmart Inc, the second largest stock in the sector, with a return of 10.8%.