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“At its best, life is completely unpredictable.” – Christopher Walken

Morning stock market summary

Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.  

If Christopher Walken was right, why do the markets feel so terrible? You’ve seen all the different ways of measuring the extreme levels of uncertainty in the markets, and it only seems to get worse with each passing day. After President Trump spent much of last week downplaying the degree of tariffs that would be announced on April 2nd, so-called “Liberation Day”, last night the Wall Street Journal reported that the Administration is now re-considering an across-the-board 20% tariff. So, if you thought you had no idea what was going on, you’re not alone. Adding to that, if you think we’ll suddenly start to see certainty come Wednesday, good luck with that.

Equity futures are sharply lower to start the week even after Friday’s plunge. While the rest of the world appeared to have avoided America’s cold, that’s not the case this morning. Europe’s STOXX 600 is down close to 2% relative to Friday’s close and nearly 6% from its YTD high.  Asian stocks were also lower overnight. The Nikkei plunged over 4% and is now down 12% from its high in December.

S&P 500 futures are down just about 1% this morning, and that puts the lows from mid-March into play as the current level of the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY) is right between its intraday low ($549.68) and its closing low ($551.42) from March 13th. If the intraday lows from that day don’t hold, the next potential level of support is the post-Labor Day lows.