Stocks reach new high
After months of tariff-induced volatility, the S&P 500 notched a new intraday record high.
The S&P 500 opened at a new intraday all-time high Friday for the first time since February 19, a fresh bullish milestone after a breakdown in momentum stocks and the president’s drumbeat on tariffs had pushed the blue chips to the brink of a bear market earlier this year.
On April 2, President Donald Trump announced major new tariffs on, effectively, the entire world. The market plunged the day after this so-called Liberation Day announcement, enduring its worst session since Covid hit.
The sell-off scraped bottom on April 8, with the S&P 500 closing down 18.9% from its February 19, 2025 high-water mark. (A bear market is declared on a 20% drop.)
Perhaps not unrelatedly, the next day, the Trump administration suddenly backed off on the tariffs, announcing a 90-day delay, prompting a 9.5% relief rally that was the market’s biggest daily gain since the pandemic.
With that, the bottom was in, as companies thought to be most exposed to the tariffs — particularly tech companies with exposure to China — rocketing off the lows.
Tech hardware companies Seagate Technologies and Western Digital are both up some 100% since that April 8 low, and semiconductor makers Micron and Microchip Technologies are up almost as much. Large cap tech stocks Oracle (up about 70%) and Palantir (about 80%) also contributed to the market-cap weighted index’s gains. Megacap tech is the biggest driver of the recovery: Nvidia rose about 60% and Microsoft hit a new all-time high last week, creating more than $2 trillion worth of market value.
