Market Recap • Week 14 2025

Highlights from the week of Mar 31 - Apr 6, 2025

Donald Trump’s Liberation Day announcements dictated the equity market performance around the world this week. Sentiment had been somewhat optimistic early in the week on hopes that the worst case had been priced in. It had not.

Markets immediately sold off when Trump started speaking Wednesday afternoon (EST). No country was spared from tariffs but the US markets got hit the hardest.

‍

Equities

America

• 🇺🇸 S&P 500 plummeted 9.08% for its worst week since the Covid-crash of March 2020. The weekly performance is even more startling when considering that the index was actually up by 1.6% heading into Thursday. President Trump’s tariff announcement on Liberation Day completely derailed the optimism. The S&P 500 is now down 17% from the February peak.
• 🇺🇸 Nasdaq Composite fared even worse, dropping 10% this week and officially entering a bear market with a 22.65% decline from the peak. Both the S&P and Nasdaq undercut their August lows and closed at their lowest levels since April last year.
• 🇺🇸 Dow Jones Industrial as expected held up slightly better than its peers in a risk-off environment but still fell 7.86% for the week.
• 🇺🇸 Russell 2000 dropped 9.7% for the week and closed at a 16-month low. It’s also well into bear market territory, down 26% since topping in November.
• 🇨🇦 TSX fell 6.32% for the week. Just as the US and most other markets, most of the selling took place on Friday rather than Thursday when reality set in.
• 🇲🇽 IPC held up better than most with a 3.24% decline for the week.
• 🇧🇷 Bovespa fell in line with the Mexican market, down 3.52% for the week. Both countries were hit with relatively lighter tariffs.
• 🇦🇷 Merval plummeted 11.38% for the week after a 7.38% drop on Friday alone. It closed 26% off of its all-time high set in January.

‍

Europe

• 🇪🇺 STOXX 600 didn’t escape the tariff war nor the market selling pressure. It fell 8.44% to fully erase all of this year’s gains and mark its lowest weekly close in over a year. So much for that European outperformance.
• 🇬🇧 FTSE 100 dropped 6.97% for the week despite the UK being one of the “lucky” ones in Trump’s tariff roll-out.
• 🇩🇪 DAX remains one of the best looking charts. Although it plummeted 8.1% this week, it remains in a clear and strong uptrend. It’s also one of the few among the main indices to still be green for the year, up 3.68% at the moment.
• 🇫🇷 CAC 40 also fell 8.1% and went negative for the year.
• 🇩🇰 C25 fell off a cliff and lost 10.87%, led by a 21.55% decline in Maersk. The index closed at 1,520, its lowest since 2022. If it drops another 7.4% we’re back to 2020 levels.

‍

Asia

• 🇯🇵 Nikkei 225 fell 9% and closed right at the level that served as resistance throughout 2023. It will be interesting to see if the market can stage a rebound from here.
• 🇨🇳 Hang Seng was one of the few bright spots this week, albeit helped by a Friday holiday. The index fell just 1.52% on Thursday and 2.46% for the week.
• 🇨🇳 CSI 300 closed 1.37% lower this week.
• 🇮🇳 Nifty 50 also outperformed the American and European markets with a 2.61% decline this week. It’s still well off of its 2024 peak but hasn’t undercut the lows set about a month ago.
• 🇰🇷 KOSPI fell 3.62% for the week.
• 🇹🇼 TSEC lost just 1.41% this week but was closed on Thursday and Friday. Let’s see if the index catches up to the downside next week.

‍

Other

• The VIX unsurprisingly soared to its highest level since the August crash caused by the unwinding of the yen carry trade. It more than doubled this week to close at 45.31. Aside from last August, we haven’t been at this level since the Covid-crash in 2020.

‍

Currencies & Commodities

• The DXY dropped on Thursday following Liberation Day but caught a bid on Friday, closing the week down just 1.07% at 102.893.
• USD.EUR declined 1.11%.
• USD.DKK weakened 1.23% to 6.803, the lowest since October.
• USD.GBP eked out a gain of 0.28% after a 1.66% rally on Friday.
• USD.JPY lost 1.94% to its lowest weekly close since October last year.
• USD.CNH strengthened by 0.35% for the week after significant volatility both up and down on Thursday and Friday.
• Gold couldn’t escape the selling despite being a perceived “flight-to-safety” and fell 1.52% for the week. This came after briefly nudging a new all-time high at $3,167 on Thursday. Gold closed the week at $3,037/ounce and is still up 15.74% for the year.
• Silver did even worse and plummeted 13.26% for the week. Silver has had a great 2025 so far but almost erased all of its yearly gains this week.
• Copper followed silver and dropped 13.96% this week. It’s still up 9.39% for the year though.
• Bitcoin has performed surprisingly well this week. Although it’s down 4% since the tariff announcement, it still upby 1.2% for the week as of Saturday morning (CET). Perhaps the “digital gold” narrative is finally playing out. Let’s see how things unfold in the coming days and weeks.
• The altcoin market is lagging Bitcoin a bit but still significantly outperforming equities. The crypto market minus Bitcoin is down 1.1% as of Saturday morning with Ethereum (ETH) unchanged. This has also pushed Bitcoin dominance up to 62.78%.

‍

Bond yields

• 🇺🇸 The US 2-year dropped 6.85% on recession fears and expectations of additional rate cuts by the Fed. It’s now yielding 3.644%.
• 🇺🇸 The US 10-year fell 5.9% and closed at exactly 4% after hitting 3.86% intraweek.
• 🇪🇺 The Euro 2-year plummeted 9.38% to 1.835%, its lowest level since 2022.
• 🇪🇺 The Euro 10-year fell 5.21% to a yield of 2.586%.
• 🇨🇳 The China 10-year declined 4.29% to 1.805%.
• 🇨🇳 The China 30-year fell 4.56% to 1.947%.