Thus far, the zero-day options traders and long-positioned investors have had their way with markets. In consideration of the timing of the tariff announcement, bing late in the trading session, there's a good possibility that trading will follow the same "dare, double dare, triple dare" path right up until the decisive moment, much in the way traders play FOMC policy statements.
On the other hand, the gaming and teasing is likely to have set up shorts with a golden opportunity, able to play put options or outright shorting of stocks and indices from a higher level than anticipated. It's a safe bet that the people sending stocks higher are one and the same that will be shorting Wednesday afternoon. It's just business, how the game is played in the Wall Street casino.
Trump is likely to announce tariffs of up to 20% on trading partners across the global spectrum, with special attention to the usual suspects, China, Japan, and the EU trade bloc, the wild card being the actual date of impostion of said tariffs. While the market anticipates the tariffs to be on the extreme end, there almost certainly will be a lag between today's announcement and the actual levying of tariffs, allowing the administration time for negotiation and new agreements and understandings with various trade partners.
There's also a great potential for retaliatory or "in kind" tariffs levied on U.S. exports into foreign markets. Some countries may consider playing "hard ball" with Trump, suffer the consequences and move ahead with their own priorities.
Bottom line, while April 2nd may indeed be Trump's "Liberation Day," the actual levying and impact may be weeks or months ahead. In that scenario, expect the longs to be on the right side of the trade, sending stocks higher as shorts scramble to cover their - for now - bad bets, leaving global markets on a razor's edge.
Elsewhere, gold and silver continue to reach higher. Early on Wednesday morning, gold futures traded as high as $3,167, silver up to $34.81. Spot markets marked up gold at $3,134 and silver at $34.05.
WTI crude continued to catch the eye, trading as high as $71.93, reflecting the belief that oil will be affected by the coming tariffs. That may be wishful thinking on the part of oil barons. If the tariffs are levied and long-lasting, slowing trade is a real possibility, which would send oil prices lower based on declining demand.
On the labor front, Tuesday's JOLTS report was inconsequential. This morning, ADP reported private employers added 155,000 jobs in March, better than expected, but, with little effect on stock futures, which are tanking. Dow futures: -323; NASDAQ futures: -232; S&P futures: -55.
With Wednesday's game plan in hand, the following - published this morning in the April issue of idleguy.com - takes a look back at 1st quarter winners and losers. (Note: will be updated, reposted as time allows)
To say that the first quarter of 2025 has been turbulent would be understating the obvious. It's been testing, nerve-wracking, and filled with uncertainty.
Of utmost interest at this juncture is trying to understand or game out what comes next and maybe it's worth looking at what has and hasn't worked so far to get some ideas going forward.
Starting with everybody’s favorite (because it’s been so easy), stocks did not perform well at all. The major indices nosedived through the quarter, though the path down wasn’t by any means a straightforward one, as it usually isn’t.
Financial news outlets have been blaring about how the first quarter was the worst since 2022. Boo-hoo! Outside of the quick and ultimately painless COVID collapse of 2020, stocks have been on a straight line to Olympus since the GFC of 2008-09.
Buy and hold investors had such an easy time of it, any little disruption in the force that is Wall Street is seen as some kid of rude, unwarranted intrusion into their almost-perfect existence, where unicorns romp about on the lawns and returns from stock market investments provide for all the luxuries life can afford. Such is the attitude of the horde that has never experienced financial pain and suffering, the kind of dispirited detachment that has preceded almost every other major market correction or crash.
At the same time, those insufferable goldbugs have been making out like masked bandits at a train heist. Whether they’re right or wrong about “honest money”, de-dollarization, or the evils of fractional reserve banking, for the past three months - and for pretty much the past year, two years, and 5 years - they won. They beat the stock market. Get over it.
Rather than debating the finer points of Keynesian or Austrian economics, let’s let the numbers do the talking with the biggest winners and losers of the first quarter of 2025.
| Winners | 1Q % Gain | Losers | 1Q % Loss |
| Gold | +19.28% | NASDAQ | -10.42% |
| Silver | +18.37% | S&P 500 | -4.59% |
| S&P 3X Short EFT (SDS) | +9.10% | Dow 30 | -1.28% |
| S&P Bear 3X EFT (SPXS) | +13.38 | Tesla (TSLA) | -35.83% |
| CVS Health (CVS) | +52.79 | Nvidia (NVDA) | -19.29% |
| Okta (OKTA) | +33.53% | Apple (AAPL) | -11.30% |
| Germany (DAX) | +11.32% | Microsoft (MSFT) | -10.94% |
| Philip Morris (PM) | +33.06% | Amazon (AMZN) | -13.36% |
| France (CAC) | +6.52% | Astera Labs (ALAB) | -54.95% |
| England (FTSE) | +5.01% | Trade Desk (TTD) | -53.44% |
| Newmont (NEM) | +30.48% | Alphabet (GOOG) | -17.96% |
| SuperMicro (SMCI) | +12.14% | Teradyne (TER) | -34.40% |
| AT&T (T) | +25.79% | On Semi (ON) | -35.46% |
| Hong Kong (HSI) | +15.25% | United Airlines (UAL) | -28.89% |
| Kroger (KR) | +10.70% | Delta Airlines (DAL) | -27.93% |
| Copper | +24.81% | Deckers (DECK) | -44.95% |
| Spain (IBEX) | +13.29% | Lululemon (LULU) | -25.98% |
| Harmony Gold (HMY) | +79.90 | Best Buy (BBY) | -14.21% |
| Agilon Health (AGL) | +227.89 | Williams Sonoma (WSM) | -14.62% |
| ExxonMobil (XOM) | +10.56% | Nike (NKE) | -16.11% |
| Visa (V) | +10.89% | Carnival (CCL) | -21.63% |
| Verizon (VZ) | +13.43% | Bitcoin (BTC) | -10.63% |
| Deere & Co. (DE) | +10.78% | Etherium (ETH) | -45.26% |
| Coca-Cola (KO) | +15.03% | Cardano (ADA) | -21.42% |
| Yum! Brands (YUM) | +17.29% | XRP (XRP) | -32.05% |
| Chevron (CVX) | +15.50% | Dogecoin (DOGE) | -46.18% |
The figures presented here represent gains or loss from December 31, 2024 through March 31, 2025. As such, some may be a little distorted or skewed due to the timing of the readings. In the case of the major indices, for instance, the end of December was near a low off late November - early December highs. Additionally, stocks rallied strongly in January before leveling off in February and falling in March.
Admittedly, it was a lot easier to find losers than winners. When almost everything is moving in the same direction, it’s tough to find those who are swimming upstream, against the general flow.
Now, there you have it. Do you now sell the winners and buy the losers? Or vice versa, doubling down on success and/or failure. While catching falling knives is usually left to circus performers, it’s equally dangerous to believe that some kind of bottom has been put in place and those stocks or assets that crashed and burned for the past three months are going to suddenly reverse course and rise majestically like the sun over Mount Fiji.
That kind of thing only happens in movies, and usually in bad ones.
A bit of nibbling might satisfy the animal spirits, but most professionals are urging a more cautious and patient approach. It would be prudent to keep an eye out for complete capitulation before attempting to go “all in.” It’s times like these that one needs to appreciate the difference between return on capital and return of capital.
One asset that managed to hold itself together pretty well was cash. Those good old crinkly Federal Reserve Notes didn’t lose as much as a percent or two, and, depending on what you were buying with it, might even had a slight uptick in value.
One thing that wasn’t useful to spend cash on was gasoline. Even though fuel is down from a year ago (thank God!) prices at the pump actually increased during the first three months of 2025, compared with November and December of 2024. Regional differences and urban/rural differentials vary, but overall, gas prices that seemed to be going down are actually going back up.
One might have been able to procure some savings at the supermarket, depending on whether or not you enjoy eggs for breakfast every morning. Prices have been sliding in most locales the past few months. Nothing great, but big chains like Krogers, Publix, Wegman’s and others have been experiencing some oversupply in certain categories and have been marking down, often substantially. One thing Americans don’t have to worry about is starvation. We have plenty of food, the trick being able to afford to buy it.
Cars, both used and new, have come down to more reasonable levels. How much of the reasonableness occurred in the first quarter is probably more a matter of how well your local dealer is doing and your skills of negotiation. America also has no shortage of cars, trucks, SUVs, motorcycles, RVs, and ATVs.
Looking both backwards and forwards, stock charts of the major averages from the first quarter appear eerily similar to those of the first quarter of 2022. That 2022 downturn didn’t end until November. If stocks are headed on a similar trajectory, there are further declines ahead. If not, well, there are going to be a lot of speculators walking funny for being wrong-footed at the most opportune time. It’s a tough call, but the bears seem to be having their way of late. There may be a bit of turbulence before Elon Musk’s rocket reaches maximum thrust, headed for Trump’s “golden age.”
The choice is yours as to which ways your financial well-being should proceed. Choose wisely. Or, like most people with passive investment accounts, let a “professional” choose for you. After all, they know best, don’t they? At the Close, Tuesday, April 1, 2025: Dow: 41,989.96, -11.80 (-0.03%) NASDAQ: 17,449.89, +150.60 (+0.87%) S&P 500: 5,633.07, +21.22 (+0.38%) NYSE Composite: 19,398.28, +2.42 (+0.01%)
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