The market and economic outlook in the U.S. remains solid. While Trump adds some volatility, none of his “radical” moves are actually shifting the market. The market is up +3.70% over the past 30 days, and there are no alarm bells ringing from institutional asset managers. There’s a lot of noise on the retail side, but nothing of substance. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if we see the markets further ahead by the end of 2025 from where we are today.
Putting Current “Volatility” into Perspective
Market movements like these are normal. Look at how the market behaved last year:
March 28 – April 29, 2024 (22 days) → Dropped -5.46%
July 26 – August 5, 2024 (20 days) → Dropped -8.49%
August 30 – September 6, 2024 (7 days) → Dropped -4.25%
Jan 30 – Feb 12, 2025 (13 days) → Dropped -0.32%
Now here’s the interesting part—you didn’t hear about any of these moves. In 2024, we saw far more market swings and real uncertainty around monetary policy. But none of that was caused by war, Ukraine- Russia or the middle east, it wasn’t politics, Harris/Biden or Trump. Every major market movement in 2024 was driven by Jerome Powell and the Federal Reserve’s announcements on interest rate policy, and not meeting expectations.
Yet in 2024, there were no big headlines—because that’s not a “story” the media can spin to get clicks. So in 2024, we had real worries, real substance, and real volatility, but barely any main stream media news coverage.
Now in 2025, we have no major worries, NO real volatility by comparison (-0.32% in 13 days), but endless news coverage. You would think the market was down over 10%, its absolutely crazy. However we saw this type of coverage durnig Trump's first term.
During Trump's first term, from January 2017 to January 2021, the S&P 500 experienced a total return of approximately 67% . As a remidner during Trump's first term, we saw the fastest market correction due to the Covid 19 event in his final months of office. Ideally that negative Covid event ends up being a truly once in a life time experience and the next few years turn out far more postive.
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to Cliff, Mario, Mark, or our TSG team.