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Monday, May 12, 2025

Markets posted one of its strongest sessions of 2025 so far. We’ve had a volatile first half of the year, and we might expect that volatility to continue. But with all the ups and downs, today’s big day into the green has brought the S&P 500 within 5% of its all-time trading high. The Dow and S&P 500 are within 1% of posting profits year to date.

The Dow shot up 1160 points today, for a +2.81% gain — and it was the laggard among the major indexes. The S&P 500 grew +184 points, +3.26%. The Nasdaq, which one the day on strength in tech stocks, was up a whopping +779 points, +4.35%. The small-cap Russell 2000 gained +68 points, +3.40%.

Of course, the catalyst for this seismic shift comes from the agreement between the U.S. and China to pause their reciprocal tariffs (which had ballooned to +145% on Chinese imports to the U.S. and +125% on U.S. exports to China). Amazon AMZN and Meta Platforms META were both up +8% today, leading the way for “Mag 7” stocks.

Chinese stocks also saw a bounce today, with Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index gaining +3% today, for its best trading day since March. Meanwhile, the U.S. Dollar is back up to its one-month high, and Gold — which had been a demonstrative hedge when the equities market was melting away, just a few short weeks ago — is down -3% today.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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