After jumping 4% Tuesday morning, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq were flat by mid-afternoon Tuesday.
Topline
Stocks soared then fell flat Tuesday as investors digested the latest developments in President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” trade war, failing to sustain a recovery from historically bad losses over the last week even as China, the world’s second-largest economy, threatens to “fight to the end” with the U.S. over the soaring import duties.Key Facts
All three major U.S. stock indexes were close to flat shortly after 1 p.m., as the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.5%, or 200 points, the S&P 500 inched up 0.1% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq slipped 0.2%.
That was a major reversal from a morning surge, in which the Dow spiked more than 1,400 points and the S&P and Nasdaq jumped about 4% apiece, which would have been the indexes’ steepest respective gains since 2022.
Tuesday’s session mirrored more of a dead cat bounce, in which a financial asset in decline briefly rallies before falling further, rather than a sustained improvement in sentiment, with the lost steam coming after no tangible reversal of the White House’s tariff plans materialized.
