Trading results for 13 March 2025
President Trump is once again unsettling investors with his new tariffs. Even before trading began on Thursday, macroeconomic data on producer-side consumer inflation – the PPI index – was released. Like the CPI index published the day before, it showed that consumer inflation in February had slowed more than analysts expected. This should have been good news for investors, encouraging them to buy stocks – but it wasn’t.
Trump re-emerged with threats to impose 200% tariffs on alcohol imports from the European Union, further escalating trade tensions. Naturally, this dampened investor sentiment. As a result, indexes started falling right from the opening of the main trading session, while the bulls could only watch helplessly, making occasional attempts to resist the bears’ onslaught.
Their efforts were in vain – small rebounds led nowhere, and by the final bell, indexes had closed near their daily lows. All major U.S. benchmarks lost over 1% – the Dow Jones and S&P 500 fell 1.3-1.4%, while the NASDAQ Composite lost nearly 2% (-1.96%).
Once again, sellers focused their efforts on leading tech stocks, where average losses – as well as in the consumer cyclical and communication services sectors – hovered around 2%. By the end of Thursday, only stocks in the materials (+0.3%) and energy (+0.2%) sectors managed to stay in positive territory.
Naturally, the ITS index family also succumbed to selling pressure. The ITS World Index (ITSW) lost 0.74%, while the Islamic securities index, ITS Shariah (ITSS), fell 1.51%. The ITSW index saw some support from Chinese stocks, with JD.com (JD) and Baidu (BIDU) gaining 2%, but this was not enough to offset the nearly 5% drop in Meta Platforms (META).
The situation in the ITSS index was even grimmer – only six out of 30 constituent companies ended the day in the green. Their gains were modest, with Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), PepsiCo (PEP) and Procter & Gamble (PG) rising by just a few tenths of a percent. The best performers within ITSS were pharmaceutical giants Merck & Co. (MRK) and AstraZeneca (AZN), but even their gains were limited to just over 1%.
The market continues to decline, raising concerns among investors. The only consolation is that the current downturn has not yet turned into a panic sell-off. So, in the back of many investors' minds, there remains a lingering hope: “Maybe we’ll get through this after all?”