The Vanguard S&P 500 ETF ( NYSEMKT: VOO) had its worst day in months on Thursday, falling 1.6%, and the selloff appears likely to continue as Friday dawns, with the ETF down another 1% premarket. And why? Your guess is as good as anyone else's. Theories range from worries that artificial intelligence isn't generating the efficiencies it was supposed to (such that investments in AI aren't paying off for companies using it) to fears that AI stocks have been bid up to unsustainable valuations.
Big Tech and other superstars of the U.S. stock market are rallying on Monday, as Wall Street recovers most of its loss from last week. The S&P 500 climbed 1.3% to claw back three-quarters of its drop from last week, which was its first weekly loss in four. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 245 points, or 0.5%, as of 1:15 p.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 2.1% higher. Nvidia was by far the strongest force lifting the market and rallied 4.8%.
"I'm not going to get ahead of the two leaders who will be meeting in Korea on Thursday, but I can tell you we had a very good two days," Bessent said. "So I would expect that the threat of the 100% [tariff] has gone away, as has the threat of the immediate imposition of the Chinese initiating a worldwide export control regime."
A chart making the rounds on social media has sparked intense debate about the state of the American economy. Since November 2022, when ChatGPT launched, the S&P 500 has surged more than 70% while job openings have plummeted roughly 30%. The juxtaposition has earned the graphic a foreboding nickname: the " scariest chart in the world." At first glance, the divergence appears to tell a simple story: that artificial intelligence has fractured the economy, enriching investors while devastating workers.
In May 2025 , Suze Orman predicted that the U.S. stock market will "absolutely skyrocket" through the remainder of the year and into early 2026. She urged long-term investors to stay invested rather than sell due to fear. Orman recommended building a broadly diversified portfolio by holding at least 25 to 50 individual stocks (or using index ETFs) to take advantage of growth. She specifically highlighted large-cap growth stocks and growth-oriented ETFs (e.g., SPYG, VUG) as likely to benefit in the near future.
Last night, the Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. Commerce Department was in talks with "several" quantum computing companies over equity stakes in those firms in return for federal funding. Specifically, the Journal said D-Wave, IonQ, and Rigetti were in discussions with the federal government about the matter. The report stated that Quantum Computing Inc. and the privately held Atom Computing were "considering similar arrangements."
Stocks had been heading for a slight gain in the morning, until Trump took to his social media platform and said he's considering "a massive increase of tariffs" on Chinese imports. He's upset at restrictions China has placed on exports of its rare earths, which are materials that are critical for the manufacturing of everything from consumer electronics to jet engines.
I always believed that Spotify could play an important role in revolutionizing listening around the world, and with more than 700 million users, we've truly charted a new course bringing creativity to every corner of the globe,
Trump's overhaul of the program, by mandating a $100,000 fee for new applications, may disrupt projects of Indian outsources like Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. and Infosys Ltd. that derive a large chunk of revenue from the US. TCS shares fell as much as 3.4%, the most in more than two months, while Infosys slipped as much as 3.9%. Tech Mahindra Ltd. declined 6.5%.
Whilst gold prices have many drivers, one is the perception that it operates as a haven that investors buy in times of fear. After all, it doesn't pay a dividend or a coupon, and over the very long term, it's struggled to compete with other asset returns. This September, gold prices exceeded their previous inflation-adjusted peak from January 1980. That was a time when the US was heading into recession, driven by a huge monetary tightening by the Fed under Paul Volcker, aiming to get inflation down. So historically, high gold prices haven't exactly been associated with rampant optimism," Allen told clients in a note this morning.
As CNBC reports, ADP's private payrolls report issued this morning shows that private employers added 54,000 net new jobs last month, about one-third worse than the 75,000 positions economists had predicted, and barely half the 106,000 jobs added in July. This is bad news for the economy, but arguably good news for stock traders hoping to see the Federal Reserve cut its target interest rate at the FOMC meeting two weeks from now. And because rate cuts are generally considered "good" for making the stock market rise, investors don't seem too upset by today's bad employment news.
A federal judge just ruled that Google does not have to sell its Chrome browser, and Googlers seem pretty happy about it. On Tuesday, US District Judge Amit Mehta handed down penalties to Google after ruling its search business a monopoly. The US Justice Department, which filed the suit against Google in 2020, had proposed forcing the company to sell its Chrome browser. The judge ruled against this-one of several decisions made in the landmark antitrust case.
Wall Street is sinking on Tuesday as rising pressure from the bond market pulls U.S. stocks further from their records. The S&P 500 fell 1.1% and was on track for its worst day in a month. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 412 points, or 0.9%, as of 2:30 p.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 1.3% lower. All three are still relatively close to their recently set all-time highs.
On Friday, a federal appeals court ruled many of the President's recently announced tariffs unconstitutional, raising the prospect that monies raised from the levies will have to be refunded, and will not in fact reduce the deficit at all. With this income stream now threatened, yields on US Treasury bonds are rising, with the 30-year Treasury bill approaching 5% today.