Trading results for 28 March 2025
No matter how much investors tried to pretend everything was fine, reality always wins – by the end of Q1, the market reeked of pessimism. Last Friday’s session confirmed this – as did the entire past week, which, incidentally, began on a rather optimistic note.
In fact, following the first two trading days of last week, there was hope the market might overcome the pessimism of the past month, and we would finally witness the long-awaited recovery. However, this fata morgana did not hover over the market for long – by the week’s end, sentiment had shifted dramatically.
Friday’s sell-off ultimately wiped out all the gains. The indexes closed the week in the red – retreating from their 200-day moving averages, which are now acting as resistance – and once again moved down toward this year’s lows. Weekly losses were still relatively modest: from -1% for the Dow Jones Index (-0.96%) to -2.6% for the NASDAQ Composite. Still, the very fact of yet another decline is enough to darken the mood.
The key trigger for this new wave of sell-offs was investors’ fear of upcoming protectionist tariffs set to take effect on 2 April. The uncertainty around the tariffs – and, more importantly, their consequences – is frightening investors, prompting them to double down on selling. Thankfully, we have not yet seen a broad-based panic – but a rebalancing is already underway, with capital flowing from higher-risk stocks (primarily leading tech names) into safer assets like consumer staples.
As a result, stocks in the Consumer Defensive sector rose by an average of 1.21% over the week, and Real Estate Management companies gained 0.25%. The main losers were tech stocks – down nearly 4% on average (-3.84%) – followed by Communication Services, which dropped by 2.83%.
This dynamic naturally affected the ITS family of indexes. Both the global market index ITS World (ITSW) and the Islamic finance index ITS Shariah (ITSS) lost over 2% of their value during the week. The main loser in both indexes was chipmaker Broadcom (AVGO), which shed more than 10% of its market cap.
This is hardly surprising – other major tech companies also suffered comparable losses. Among the big tech names, only Apple (AAPL) held up fairly well – staying in positive territory until the end of the week – but Friday’s sell-off took its toll, and the company closed with a slight loss of 0.17%.
There is, however, still strong demand for healthcare and pharmaceutical stocks – especially for major players like Merck & Company (MRK), AbbVie (ABBV), Eli Lilly (LLY) and others. Friday’s session illustrated this perfectly – the only stocks to gain within the ITSS index that day were all pharmaceutical. Then again, this is hardly surprising – in today’s market, investors may well be reaching for tranquillisers themselves.
So, the week’s results are hardly encouraging. But we are not facing a disaster – at least not yet – and the market is doing its best to stay afloat. The bulls are still putting up a fight, but for how much longer remains uncertain. Hopes of a quick return to early-year levels are fading, and that thought alone is enough to bring anyone down.