Stock Markets Tumble on 1st Day Trading After Trump Tariffs

Stock markets across the world have tumbled after US President Trump’s Executive Order started on Saturday to impose 25% import tariffs on goods and services from Mexico and Canada, as well as 10% from China.

Canada has responded with its own 25% tariff on US imports meanwhile President Trump suggested that tariffs will “definitely” be applied to the EU although the UK may escape given it is ‘net’ neutral on trade between the UK and US.

At the time of writing (Monday afternoon), US stock markets have recently opened with Dow Jones down 1.36% and S&P 500 down 1.87%.  Across the globe:

• FTSE 100 is down 1.50%.
• FTSE 250 is down 1.68%.
• German DAX is down 1.93%.
• French CAC is down 1.86%.
• Japan Nikkei closed 2.69% down.
• China and Hong Kong markets are closed for Chinese New Year and re-open Tuesday (late 1.30 am UK time).

Comment

Clearly, we wait with concern for Chinese and Hong Kong markets to open as well as any tariffs applied to UK or Europe.  Either way, the impact is that prices will rise across all those affected keeping inflation high and therefore interest rates to remain higher for longer.

We hope clients took our guidance to think about locking in profits over the last few weeks as we have long been forecasting a recession as well as market ‘shock’ events.