Early Look

Wednesday, April 9, 2025

S&P futures whipsawed all over the place overnight, with Spuz -0.3% at 5,000 last in volatile trading, off overnight lows 4,871.75 (still didn’t trade below Monday low of 4,832) and off highs of 5,057.50 as the market watches every move and comment related to tariffs and trade policy. However, after the US followed through on a threat to add a 50% tariff on Chinese goods, in addition to 34% reciprocal tariffs, raising the overall tariff rate on Chinese goods to 104% at midnight, China has thus far refrained from immediately responding the latest round of US tariffs, a departure from the past two episodes when President Donald Trump hiked duties and Beijing hit back within minutes. That has given markets a little hope as US futures are bouncing off lows as Nasdaq futures turned positive. As for Tuesday, it wasn’t pretty as the S&P 500 rose over 4% at the peak but closed in the red; the last time we saw that was Oct 17, 2008. Yesterday also marked the first close below 5,000 for the S&P since April 19^th of 2024. Brent oil falls below $60 per barrel for the first time since February 2021; The 10-yr yield surging again, up another 11.5 bps to 4.376% (off Monday lows 3.88%) as China likely reduces Treasury holdings, while the shorter end of curve rises less with the 2-yr yield +4bps to 3.779%. June gold surges $72 or 2.4% to $3,062 an ounce. In Asian markets, The Nikkei Index tumbled -1,298 points or nearly 4% to 31,714, while the Shanghai Index jumped 41 points to 3,186 and the Hang Seng Index advanced 136 points to 20,264. In Europe, the German DAX is down -600 points or 2.98% to 19,676, while the FTSE 100 is down -226 points or 2.87% to 7,683. Amazingly not much talk about upcoming CPI inflation data (tomorrow morning) or the start of earnings season with big banks kicking off results on Friday. Some startling stats: Ryan Detrick tweets: “Make that 3 days in a row the S&P 500 closed at least 3% off the intra-day high. 8/25/15 the last time we saw that and that day did mark a low, as the next two gains gained 6.5%.” Charlie Bilello tweets, “the S&P 500 is down 12.1% over the last 4 trading days, the 12th biggest 4-day decline since 1950.” What has happened in the past following the biggest 4-day declines? Stocks moved substantially higher over the next 1, 3, 5 years every time.

• The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell -320.01 points, or 0.84%, to 37,645.59
• The Nasdaq Composite tumbled -335.35 points, or 2.15%, to 15,267.91
• The Russell 2000 Index declined -49.43 points, or 2.73% to 1,760.71

• 10:00 AM EST              Wholesale Inventory M/M for February
• 10:30 AM EST              Weekly DOE Inventory Data
• 11:00 AM EST              Fed’s Barkin Speaks to Economic Club of Washington DC
• 1:00 PM EST US Treasury to sell $39B in 10-year notes
• 2:00 PM EST FOMC Meeting Minutes from March meeting

• Earnings After the Close: LAKE PSMT RELL STZ

• Needham 24th Annual Virtual Healthcare Conference, 4/7-4/10
• Wells Fargo Software Symposium, 4/9-4/10
• China PPI Y/Y, CPI Y/Y and CPI M/M for March

• The UK said risks of a hit to the global economy and further sharp falls in financial markets have grown due to U.S. President Donald Trump’s import tariffs and the UK is exposed to the fallout.

• Carmakers are holding thousands of vehicles at U.S. ports while temporarily halting shipments as they seek to minimize the fallout from President Donald Trump’s trade war – Financial Times.
• Ford (F) was downgraded to Underperform from Market Perform at Bernstein with a $7 price target saying tariffs are impacting Ford just as consumer confidence wanes. Bernstein assumes that tariffs apply only to non-United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement imports, but even this “modest” scenario “sig.
• Kura Sushi (KRUS) Q2 adj EPS ($0.14) vs est. ($0.13), adj EBITDA $2.7Mm vs est. $3.37Mm on revs $64.9Mm vs est. $64.91Mm; guides FY sales $275-279Mm on 14 new restaurants.
• Mama’s Creation (MAMA) Q4 EPS $0.04 vs est. $0.03, adj EBITDA $3.1Mm vs est. $2.611Mm on revs $33.6Mm vs est. $31Mm.

• Chevron (CVX) plans to increase the use of a technique that allows it to fracture subterranean rock in three wells at a time in the Permian basin, the company told Reuters, in an effort to cut the time and cost of producing oil.

• W. R. Berkley (WRB) was downgraded to Equal Weight from Overweight at Wells Fargo with $69 tgt.

• Apple (AAPL) upgraded to Hold from Underperform at Jefferies while reduced iPhone shipment estimates by up to 7% through fiscal 2027 due to global recession risks and cut its AI revenue forecasts in fiscal 2028 and beyond, given a bearish view on smartphone AI.
• Apple (AAPL) supplier Luxshare is in discussions with customers on ways to respond to the U.S. tariffs by moving production outside of China – Reuters.
• Palo Alto Networks (PANW) announced that the company has surpassed $1.5B in cumulative sales through Google (GOOG) Cloud Marketplace as of April 2025.