Wall Street keeps shaking because of tariffs. After jumping to a big early gain on an encouraging inflation update, the U.S. stock market lost all of it after other countries announced their retaliations following President Donald Trump’s latest escalation in his trade war.
The S&P 500 was down 0.3% in midday trading after erasing an initial leap of 1.3%. The unsettled trading comes a day after the index briefly fell more than 10% below its all-time high set last month.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average also swung sharply, pinging between a gain of 287 points and a loss of 423. It was down 346 points, or 0.8%, as of 11:15 a.m. Eastern time, while the Nasdaq composite was 0.2% higher. The Nasdaq held up much better because of gains for Nvidia, Tesla and AI-related companies.
Wednesday’s U.S. Department of Labor data showed the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 2.8% on an annual basis in February, below the 2.9% forecast from economists polled by Reuters. On a monthly basis, it rose 0.2% after accelerating 0.5% in January and versus the 0.3% economists’ estimate.
Nvidia climbed 5.1% to trim its loss for the year so far to 14.9%. Server-maker Super Micro Computer rallied 4.2%, and GE Vernova, which is helping to power AI data centers, rose 4.3%.
Elon Musk’s Tesla, whose price had more than halved since mid-December, was heading toward its first back-to-back gain in a month. It added 6%. Intel jumped 6% after a report said TSMC had pitched Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices and Broadcom about taking a stake in a joint venture to operate the U.S. chip company’s factories.
In stock markets abroad, indexes rose across much of Europe after a mixed session in Asia.
In the bond market, Treasury yields edged up to regain more of their losses from recent months sparked by worries about the U.S. economy’s strength. The 10-year Treasury rose to 4.30% from 4.28% late Tuesday and from 4.16% at the start of last week.
