Wall Street ends sharply lower on mounting concerns over economy, tariffs

Wall Street ends sharply lower on mounting concerns over economy, tariffs

By Stephen Culp

Fri February 21, 2025 7:56 PM

Whoa! Speak of Black Friday! There was a lot of competition today for worst news! Was it L.A. mayor fires fire chief? Or Trump fires the black Chair of the JCS? Or that the stock market has had three terrible days in a row! Today even the S&P registered a 3-digit loss and the Dow was down a whopping 748 points notching its biggest one-week decline since October and the S&P its biggest one-day drop since December.  

The market is in Day 2 of assessing the future scenario suggested by yesterday’s Walmart conundrum and the sudden decline in consumer sentiment it represents, a sentiment that has until now been the critical part of the economy’s health. Today the Walmart woes were added to by the announcement of still more tariffs leading to an evaporation of business optimism and a Friday that bled red. In the words of today’s expert, “Uncertainty is the new investor narrative.” To balance the picture, the good news included Q4 in the home stretch with 76% beating estimates and Q4 earnings growth now stands at 15.7% vs 7.8% estimate on January 1^st. Volume was very heavy at 17.06 billion vs the 15.3 billion average. 

DJ: 44,176.65  -450.94      NAS: 19,962.36  -93.89      S&P: 6,117.52  -26.63          2/20

DJ: 43,428.02  -748.63      NAS: 19,524.01  -438.36    S&P: 6,013.13  -104.39        2/21

Fri 2-21-25 7:56 pm Wall Street ends sharply lower on mounting concerns over economy, tariffs | Reuters