S&P 500 jumps 1.6%, Nasdaq 2.2% as Big Tech leads rally on trade optimism

The S&P 500 climbed 1.6% on Thursday. The Nasdaq gained 2.2%. The Dow rose 374 points, up 1%. IBM fell 7%, pulling the Dow down. Stocks moved because of Wall Street’s hope for global trade progress, especially between the US and China, according to CNBC.

Nvidia, Meta, Amazon, Tesla, and Microsoft all rose by around 2%. These megacap tech stocks pushed markets up. Traders jumped in, betting on tech even though US-China trade talks haven’t actually restarted. 

The White House’s recent actions, including more tariffs, have kept markets on edge. This rebound came even as China said there were no trade discussions happening.

China shuts the door as US sends mixed signals

He Yadong, spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Commerce, said Thursday that “all sayings” about any trade talk progress should be ignored. He said clearly that no trade talks are happening. He also demanded the US drop its unilateral tariffs.

President Donald Trump responded by saying he was willing to be less confrontational with Beijing. That came after Scott Bessent, the Treasury Secretary, said the US has an “opportunity for a big deal” with China. But nothing specific was announced. No meetings were planned. There was no timeline. Trump’s tariff on Chinese imports remains at 145%.

Despite the lack of progress, traders still reacted like something had changed. Ross Mayfield, an analyst at Baird, wasn’t buying it.

“I don’t trust the move,” Ross said in an interview with CNBC. “China overnight was pretty explicit that there were no negotiations ongoing. Perhaps the market is still feeling some confidence that at least the administration is talking about wanting a deal, as opposed to digging in and raising tariffs to insane rates. There’s potentially some leftover optimism from yesterday.”

The numbers show how badly stocks have done since Trump rolled out his new trade policy on April 2. The S&P 500 is down 4% since that day. The Dow has dropped 5.7%. The Nasdaq has fallen 3.6%. The gains on Thursday didn’t erase those losses.

Investors are still nervous. A survey by the American Association of Individual Investors shows that 54.6% of investors now feel more bearish about stocks than they did at the start of the year. Another 26.7% say they are cautious but not fully bearish. Just 8.6% say they feel more bullish.

Only a little more than 10% said they feel the same or don’t know how they feel about stocks. When looking at the next six months, only 21.9% of those surveyed said they were bullish. That was the lowest number since earlier this month. 

At the same time, 55.6% said they were bearish about the six-month outlook. That was down from 61.9% earlier in April. That number was the highest level of bearishness since March 2009 during the global financial crisis. It was the third-highest ever since the survey began in the 1980s.

People who said they were neutral in the short term rose to 22.5%. That’s up from 12.5% two weeks ago. That earlier number was the lowest level of neutrality since May 2009.

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