Donald Trump's Tariff Policy Has Repeatedly Triggered Multi-Trillion-Dollar Stock Swings Since Early 2025. Here's Why Markets Still Struggle to Price In His Next Move.
The president's unique approach to trade policy is creating a lot of volatility.
Overview
President Donald Trump is proving to be a very challenging commander-in-chief to work around for most investors, even as markets have soared during his tenure. On April 3, 2025, the day after the much-hyped "Liberation Day" barrage of new tariffs, the S&P 500 (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC) fell 4.8% as the Magnificent Seven group of technology companies corrected sharply downward.
Just six trading days later, most of the damage had been erased, leaving investors with whiplash and prompting many to wonder whether they'd sold their assets too hastily. Volatility never went away, but it now concentrates in individual stocks rather than the market as a whole. The gap between average single-stock volatility and index volatility hit an all-time high of 31% in early July 2026, according to CBOE Global Markets. Therein lies the crux of why markets are still struggling to get a read on what the president is going to do next.
Image source: The White House.
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Originally published at www.fool.com.