A volatile market marked the first week of Q2 as China retaliated to the U.S. tariffs by imposing their own tariffs on a big list of American-made products.
It’s never an easy task to engage in confrontation with a trading partner that holds the bulk of your foreign debt, but the White House had to make a move as the U.S. trade deficit surged to the highest level since 2008 in January – and here we are.
The CBOE (VIX) volatility index reached above 25.0 early in the week when Beijing announced to put tariffs on 128 imported products, but the falling Treasury yield along with a stellar private sector payroll report from ADP prompted investors and bargain hunters to bid up stocks later in the week.
In the end, we didn’t see many corporate earnings this week and investors mostly acted on the fear of a trade war. However, the takeaway from this week was the robust job market and declining Treasury yield – both favoring the bulls.
Be sure to check out our previous week’s edition here, in which investors were hopeful that U.S. and China could avoid a full-fledged trade war.
