Market's Reaction to Trump Tariffs is 'Under Done,' Says Peter Tchir

The US stock market plummeted after President Trump announced a raft of tariff hikes, wiping out $3 trillion in combined stock-market value and sending the S&P 500 Index down 4.5% and the Nasdaq 100 down 5%.

The tariffs threaten to upend supply chains, rekindle inflation, and slow global economic growth, with some economists predicting a recession if a retaliatory spiral is triggered.

The market selloff shows a shift in sentiment, with investors now pricing in a roughly 50% chance of four quarter-point interest rate cuts by the end of this year to mitigate the economic impact of the tariffs.

Peter Tchir, Head of Macro Strategy at Academy Securities joins Bloomberg Intelligence to break down the effect this will on the global markets.

One of the worst days for US stocks since 2022 looks like a buying opportunity for the retail traders who have been among the market’s biggest bulls in recent years.

Small investors piled into many of their favorite assets, including Nvidia Corp. and the exchange-traded fund Vanguard S&P 500 ETF, as they bet that the market’s latest tumble will provide another contrarian opportunity for long-term gains, according to data tracking the users of Fidelity Investments’ brokerage.

Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc., Tesla Inc., Meta Platforms Inc., and Microsoft Corp. were some of the most actively-traded individual companies among Fidelity users, with these stocks seeing two to eight times more buy orders than sell orders.

“Even if it keeps going lower, buy more to lower your cost average,” said Pedro Correia, a 30-year-old freelance software developer who said he has been reading financial books as he builds his own retirement portfolio. He bought shares of Amazon, Google and ASML Holding NV this week. “Ten years from now it’ll be higher, so the cheaper it gets the happier I am, because I can buy more.”

The buy-the-dip mentality has long reigned supreme among individual investors who lean into the notion that markets will inevitably go higher in the long term. During the market selloff in the early days of the Covid pandemic, the retail crowd was one of the only investor groups that was buying as others sold and many ended up benefiting from that decision.

This line of thinking faced another test on Thursday when losses accelerated around the globe after President Donald Trump escalated a trade war beyond what Wall Street had anticipated. Many professional investors are preparing for a significant slowdown in economic growth.

The S&P 500 Index tumbled more than 4% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 dropped by 5%, wiping out some $3 trillion of total market value at one point. Companies like Apple, Nike Inc. a

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