A positive Friday? S&P 500 looks to snap Trump 2.0 market trend

With the S&P 500 flipping from early losses to a 0.5% advance on Friday, one of the Trump 2.0 market patterns may now be snapped.

TGIF has not been a phrase traders have been uttering this year. Since President Donald Trump’s inauguration, the S&P 500 has traded down on every Friday. It’s been the worst session of the week over this period.

One would be tempted to point to price action like this as screaming “policy risk” — the idea that traders might take some chips off the table on Friday, fearing that potential measures taken by the new administration (particularly related to trade) could be negative for stocks. This kind of trading pattern often shows up during times of particularly high geopolitical tensions.

However, while there have been many plans to impose tariffs, there hasn’t been much follow-through yet. And if this were the story, we’d expect to see down Fridays and positive Mondays, a relief rally as the weekend concerns are unwound. This hasn’t been the case.

But Mondays, of course, are somewhat skewed by having a very low sample, even considering this short time frame (just four sessions since the inauguration, thanks to holidays), and January 27, the day of the DeepSeek-induced market freak-out, having fallen on a Monday.

This weekly trading pattern has not gone unnoticed, and as can be common with market trends or coincidences, just as they start to be more commonly appreciated, they stop working.