Wednesday, April 16, 2025
Well, the good news is: we finished off session lows. The closing bell rang and we saw another step down in major market indexes, partly due to comments made early this afternoon by Fed Chair Jerome Powell. The Dow ended regular trading -699 points, -1.73%, the S&P 500 was -120 points, -2.24%, the Nasdaq -516 points, -3.07%, and the small-cap Russell 2000 slid -19 points, -1.03%.
The Nasdaq had been demonstrating outsized losses relative to the other indexes due to the “curb” of NVIDIA NVDA H20 chips earmarked for China, which will reportedly cost the chipmaker $5.5 billion. Other chipmakers, like AMD AMD, also tumbled on the news. Both companies were down roughly -7% on the session.
Notes from Fed Chair Powell’s Address
The S&P 500 was down -1% as Powell took the stage at the Economic Club of Chicago today, and -2% when he left. He spoke on just about all manner of investment and the Fed’s outlook for the market and the economy as a whole. Powell kept coming around to the points that volatility will continue as long as market uncertainty does. And, he said, uncertainty is “incredibly high.”
Powell cast a wary eye toward the potential specter of both high inflation and high unemployment based on tariff policy looking ahead. In such a scenario, the Fed would be forced to make a hard decision on interest rates. And Powell does not consider potential tariff inflation to be transitory. Slow growth and high inflation is generally the main two worries of both the Fed Chair and the average investor.
He said not to rely on a Fed “put” to help rescue the economy at this stage. Powell mentioned U.S. debt, specifically that it is on an unsustainable path, but not currently at unsustainable levels. He also said that large deficits with full employment does need to be addressed, but that politicians talking about discretionary spending cuts is quite beside the point.
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