Trading results for 1 April 2025
Tuesday’s trading vividly reflected the uncertainty currently reigning in the market. Quotes swung up and down all day as investors struggled to decide what to do. Just like individual stocks, the major indexes crossed the zero mark several times during the session, shifting from green to red and back again.
In the end, thanks to a small rally in the final hour of trading, the market settled above the zero line, with the S&P 500 and NASDAQ Composite indexes closing up by +0.38% and +0.87% respectively. Their older peer – the Dow Jones index – was less fortunate, ending the day with a small, almost symbolic decline of 0.03%.
The main reason for the Dow’s “poor health” was a sharp drop in the shares of pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson (JNJ, -7.59%) after a court rejected the company’s proposal to pay $10 billion to settle a lawsuit from consumers accusing JNJ’s baby powder of causing ovarian cancer. And it was not just JNJ that suffered – the news impacted all major pharmaceutical companies, making the Healthcare sector the worst performer of the day, with average losses of about 2% (-1.84%).
Fortunately, the sell-off in big pharma did not stop the ITS index family from ending the day in positive territory. Yes, shares of the largest pharmaceutical companies were the weakest ones in the portfolios of both the ITS World global market index (ITSW) and the ITS Shariah Islamic index (ITSS), but both still closed in the green, gaining 0.59% and 0.83% respectively. This was largely thanks to their strong diversification.
Leading the way in the ITSS index were shares of top U.S. tech companies – Tesla (TSLA), ServiceNow (NOW), Microsoft (MSFT), NVIDIA (NVDA) and Oracle (ORCL) – all of which rose by 1.5–2% (with Tesla up by an impressive 3.5%). Meanwhile, in the ITSW index, the undisputed leader was Israeli software firm Monday.com (MNDY), whose shares surged nearly 8% in a day (+7.82%).
Another Israeli company also stood out yesterday – CyberArk Software Ltd (CYBR), which added 3.04% to its market cap. Joining the Israelis were Tesla once again, along with shares of several Chinese issuers including NetEase (NTES) and Li Auto (LI). It was this international mix that allowed the ITSW index to hold steady in the current market environment.
As we can see, nothing fundamentally good or bad is happening right now. Market participants are taking a wait-and-see approach ahead of the introduction of new tariffs. This “epoch-making” event is expected to take place today – Wednesday, 2 April. That is when we may see some truly strong market moves. But in which direction they will unfold – that remains completely unclear.