'Chaos creates opportunities': Wall Street pros weigh in on market sell-off under Trump's tariff war

Sun, Mar 9, 2025, 8:00 AM 4 min read

It's been a brutal commencement to March arsenic markets reverse their Trump-driven euphoria pursuing the president's caller tariff warfare escalation and fears implicit slower economical maturation successful the look of stubborn inflation.

Both the benchmark S&P 500 (^GSPC) and tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) person each erased their post-election gains, with the second entering correction territory connected Thursday aft falling 10% from its grounds closing precocious of 20,173.89 connected Dec. 16.

February's jobs report, released Friday, offered immoderate alleviation with the US system adding 151,000 jobs, but it was inactive a brutal week for stocks. The S&P 500 capped disconnected its worst week since September.

"It's an uncertain time," John Stoltzfus, main concern strategist astatine Oppenheimer, told Yahoo Finance successful an interrogation connected Wednesday. "But gosh, we had the large fiscal crisis, we had COVID-19, we had the proviso concatenation disruptions [coming retired of that], and we did remarkably well."

In different words, the banal marketplace has remained resilient successful the look of important disruptions. And contempt caller sell-off action, astir strategists judge it volition enactment that way: Stoltzfus expects the S&P 500 to decorativeness the twelvemonth astatine 7,100, which implies astir 25% upside based connected existent trading levels.

"Chaos creates opportunities," added Dan Ives, planetary caput of exertion probe astatine Wedbush. "[Buying the dip] has been our playbook for decades. The macro scares you and past you look backmost and say, 'Why don't I ain the winners? Why don't I ain the dip?'"

But the dip has escalated quickly.

The S&P (^GSPC) has swung 2% implicit the past 7 consecutive sessions aft hitting a grounds precocious connected Feb. 19. According to information compiled by Yahoo Finance, this was the longest specified agelong successful intraday moves for the benchmark scale since August 2024 — the past clip economists warned of a maturation scare.

Prior to August, volatility swings of that level besides showed up successful March 2023, astir the clip of Silicon Valley Bank's collapse.

Given these moves, immoderate Wall Street watchers person said present is the clip to instrumentality vantage of little valuations, with the resiliency representation mostly inactive intact.

"[Tariffs] adhd uncertainty," Wedbush's Ives said. "But successful my sentiment it doesn't alteration the request cycle. In different words, this is not going to extremity the tech bull market. It's a scare. But I judge it's much opportunities than the clip to caput for the hills."

Read more: What Trump's tariffs mean for the system and your wallet