April was not the cruelest month for investors—although the tariffmageddon-obsessed naysayers may be smarting.
Despite a month of wild swings and gloomy forecasts, U.S. stock markets ended April nearly flat, brushing off predictions that Trump’s trade policies would trigger a historic collapse.
The S&P 500 finished the month down just 0.8 percent. The Dow dropped 2.1 percent, and the Nasdaq edged lower by 0.3 percent. That mild performance stood in stark contrast to a mid-April Wall Street Journal article that warned of a “Trump rout” and suggested the Dow was on track for its worst April since 1932.
It wasn’t.
In reality, April 2025’s small decline was less severe than in recent years. For instance, the S&P 500 dropped 4.2 percent in April 2024 and 8.99 percent in April 2022. So far from being the worst April in over 90 years, it was not even the worst in the last five years.
Markets digested tariff announcements, speculation over whether Trump would challenger Federal Reserve leadership, and a barrage of cautious corporate guidance—all without the kind of broad-based flight some analysts had forecast. While volatility picked up, there was no mass exodus from risk assets, no rush into bonds or gold, and no repeat of past market meltdowns.
April’s modest pullback followed strong gains in the first quarter and came amid a noisy backdrop of economic data. The first estimate of first-quarter GDP showed a slight contraction, but that weakness was largely due to a surge in imports—widely understood as businesses front-running tariffs, not a signal of collapsing demand. Consumer spending and private investment continued to grow. On Friday, the government released data showing that employers continued to hire at a healthy pace in April.
Some of the most widely circulated warnings about a market breakdown appear, in hindsight, to have confused policy volatility with economic weakness. In the end, investors showed more resilience than many forecasters gave them credit for.
The Trump-era market may be unpredictable, but it’s far from unraveling.
Read the full article here
