Image Source: Unsplash

Markets opened today at session lows, and spent most of the day in the green. At the close, we’re off intra-day highs but with an upward-pointing arrow: the Dow has gathered +235 points, +0.56%, the S&P 500 was +37 points, +0.67%, the Nasdaq has gained +151 points, +0.87% and the small-cap Russell 2000 finished +29 points, +1.45%.

Tariffs Send After-Market Trading Lower
 

At an outdoor ceremony on the White House lawn today, President Trump stepped out to a fanfare of kingly horns and drums before announcing his new trade policy. The result, before he was finished speaking, was a fresh drop in equities trading, including a -3% downward move on the Invesco QQQ ETF (QQQ - Free Report), a proxy for the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 index), to levels not seen since September of last year.

The first mention Trump made was for a +25% tariff placed on all foreign-made automobiles, presumably from anywhere around the world, as of midnight. Soon thereafter, a chart was presented with a new effective tariff rate on each of dozens of countries: China +34%, Taiwan +32%, South Korea +25% and Japan +24%, to name but a few.

Trump took it easier on our trading partners across the Atlantic: the European Union (EU) +20% and the United Kingdom (UK) +10%. The highest tariffs have been levied against relatively small countries in Asia, such as Cambodia at +49% and Vietnam +46%. Presumably, the trading leverage from the countries is less than in China or India (+26%), so companies that transferred manufacturing plants from China to Vietnam during the first Trump presidential term are likely particularly smarting this afternoon.

Needless to say, the optimism with which today’s regular trading session ended — likely on the idea that tariff uncertainty was about to be a thing of the past — will be tough to gin up tomorrow morning. The bigger question is: where do markets go from here, especially if we see more tariff retaliation from the U.S.’s trading partners than capitulation.

RH Misses in Q4, Stock Falls -20%
 

The former Restoration Hardware, RH (RH - Free Report), reported fiscal Q4 earnings after today’s close. A big miss on the bottom line to earnings of $1.58 per share (from a Zacks consensus of $1.91) helped sink shares in late trading by -20%, adding to the -36% crater the high-end furniture retailer has experience year to date. Revenues of $812 million came up short of the $827.3 million analysts had been projecting.

More By This Author: