President Donald Trump steps off Air Force One in Maryland (Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images)

Tariff talk rattles global markets as Q1 draws to a close, Goldman cuts S&P 500 price target

Markets in Europe and China were modestly red, while Japan’s Nikkei 225 dropped 4%.

David Crowther, Hyunsoo Rim, Claire Yubin Oh

3/31/25 8:58AM

The final trading session of Q1 2025 is shaping up to be a microcosm of the three-month period that it will close out, with markets around the world turning red as investors second-guess US trade policy.

Speaking about tariffs aboard Air Force One, President Trump told reporters, “You’d start with all countries, so let’s see what happens” — a comment that’s spooked investors when combined with reports that advisers have been considering a blanket 20% tariff on all US trading partners, ahead of Wednesday’s “Liberation Day.”

Japan’s Nikkei 225 dropped sharply in early trading and never dug itself out of its hole, ending today’s session down 4%, officially entering correction territory. Europe’s flagship index, the STOXX 600, is down 1.6%, and US markets are following it into the red, with the SPDR S&P 500 Trust currently down 1.4%. Though tariff-sensitive stocks like General Motors are down modestly, the price action in early trading suggests that high-beta names like Palantir and Super Micro Computer — many of which are associated with the AI trade — may be hit hardest.

Growth scare

After a flurry of soft economic data, US stocks closed out last week with a 2% drop as investors reevaluate their assumptions about the economy. Cracks in certain areas, like the credit market, signal that Wall Street is officially in “growth scare” mode. In a note published yesterday evening, Goldman Sachs officially slashed its S&P 500 forecasts for the second time this month, citing higher tariffs and growing recession risks. The bank now expects the index to dip to 5,300 over the next three months, before rebounding to 5,700 by year-end and 5,900 in 12 months.

The new year-end target marks a sharp downgrade from the earlier 6,200 and stands just 2% above where the index closed on Friday, putting it among the lowest forecasts on Wall Street, per Bloomberg. Goldman now assigns a 35% chance of a US recession over the next 12 months — up from the previous 20% — warning that if history repeats, stocks could fall another 17% from current levels, down to ~4,600. Event contract platforms like Kalshi now predict a 42% chance of a US recession this year, up from ~18% in mid-January.

Tariff fever

In the summer of 2022, fear of inflation peaked, with Google Trends data revealing that searches for the term reached their highest volume in August — just two months after US inflation itself topped out, with the CPI Index clocking a 9.1% year-on-year increase in June.

At the time, it was hard to imagine an economic term becoming more prevalent than that in our everyday lives. But the endless tariff talk since, as consumers buzz about Trump’s favorite trade policy instrument, has seen searches for “tariffs” skyrocket since the start of the year.

Company leaders are also obsessed with discussing them: for the latest quarter, the terms “tariff” and “tariffs” were featured in S&P 500 companies’ earning calls more than any other since early 2018. Interestingly, however, the number of S&P 500 companies citing the word “recession” was the lowest in over five years, per FactSet data.

So long, Q1

Though quarters are as arbitrary a measurement as any other, the end of March brings a chance to reflect on the market’s winners and losers so far.

Winners: Topping the S&P 500 Index this quarter, barring any major moves in afternoon trading, is CVS Health, which has gained a whopping 50%. Other defensive names like tobacco giant Philip Morris and AT&T are also near the top of the leaderboard, as are a number of energy stocks, which is the best-performing sector year-to-date.

Losers: We won’t labor the point on Tesla. It’s having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year. But it’s actually not the worst-performing S&P 500 stock; that dubious honor falls to Deckers Outdoor, owner of shoe brands like Hoka and Ugg, which has fallen 45% as growth slows at its key brands.

Nia Warfield, Luke Kawa

US stocks grind higher as volatility dissipates

The S&P 500 rose 0.2% in what was is fourth-smallest intraday range of 2025, as did the Russell 2000, while the Nasdaq 100 gained 0.5%.

Matt Phillips

Retail darling Planet Labs soars on earnings pop for second straight quarter

Planet Labs, which operates a network of satellites that record data, images, and information about the Earth, surged more than 40% after reporting better-than-expected quarterly numbers before the open of trading Monday.

It was the second straight quarter when the money-losing company’s quarterly update generated a massive market reaction. The stock jumped nearly 50% after numbers came out in June.

The company, which went public via SPAC in 2021, raised its full-year revenue guidance and notched its second straight quarter of positive free cash flow. Analysts and investors watch free cash flow closely as it can signal when a company’s business is starting to become more durable.

While the company is small — roughly $2.5 billion in market cap — it has posted pretty serious gains, rising almost 300% the past 12 months. Planet Labs also appears to have a fairly large retail shareholder base.

Just 57% of its float is in the the hands of institutional investors, according to FactSet data. That’s roughly the same as other retail favorites such as Palantir, though Planet Labs is no where near as highly valued as the defense data and AI software company led by CEO Alex Karp.

Planet Labs Boosts View as Deals Close Quicker on Higher Demand

Luke Kawa

OpenAI’s cash burn suggests selling Nvidia because of reported Broadcom chip orders may not make much sense

When Broadcom announced that it booked $10 billion in new orders from a customer reported to be OpenAI, shares of their major AI chip rivals tanked.

The judgement of the Invisible Hand was that this was nearly a zero-sum outcome: $130 billion of market cap erased from Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices, and a $135 billion increase in Broadcom’s market value.

But looking at this from the perspective of near-term cash flows, the market’s view seems off.

The Information is reporting that OpenAI now expects to burn through $115 billion by the end of 2029 (or more than 11 seasons’ worth of NFL broadcasting rights).

Let’s zoom in on this tidbit from The Information:

But the biggest change emerging from OpenAI’s latest projections was to its cash flows. The company projected it will burn more than $8 billion this year, or roughly $1.5 billion higher than its prior projection from earlier this year. Cash burn will more than double to more than $17 billion next year—$10 billion higher than what the company earlier projected

That $10 billion fits all too neatly with the $10 billion in orders from a major new customer that Broadcom CEO Hock Tan pointed to in the chip designer’s earnings call.

(Cheers to @lokoyacap for flagging this on X)

Assuming the reporting around OpenAI and Broadcom is accurate, these orders for ASICs don’t look to be displacing what the ChatGPT creator was going to spend on Nvidia’s GPUs, but are just in addition to it! The money’s not coming out of Jensen Huang’s pockets, it’s coming out of OpenAI’s coffers. Their spending budget is just getting bigger.

Perhaps if you squint, there’s a world in which OpenAI may prefer to have an additional $10 billion in Nvidia GPUs rather than ASICs, and I am still of the belief that hyperscalers diversifying their chip sources due to constrained top-end supplies isn’t a good sign for the company selling the most in-demand product.

But it’s quite intriguing, and says something about the depth of the pockets that fuel the AI boom, that OpenAI’s reported new relationship with Broadcom has seemingly no direct negative financial impact on Nvidia in the near term.

Luke Kawa

Broadcom’s post-earnings romp continues on heavy volumes

As Broadcom enjoys a rush of new orders from a major new customer (reported to be OpenAI), it’s also reveling in a flood of traffic into the stock.

Volumes are running at 2.5 times their daily average through 1:20 p.m. ET as traders continue to bid up shares in response to the brighter outlook for 2026 revenues, which sent the stock up 9.4% on Friday.

The chip designer is basking in a flood of price target hikes from Wall Street, with Bank of America, JPMorgan, Argus Research, Citigroup, Bernstein, Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley, Barclays, Piper Sandler, Rosenblatt Securities, Wells Fargo, and Susquehanna upping their view on how high shares can go since the company reported earnings last week.

Separately, Taiwanese industry outlet DigiTimes is reporting that orders from several other leading tech companies for custom-made Broadcom chips (or ASICs) are “already in the pipeline.” This report has not been corroborated by our own or any other publication’s reporting to date.

Matt Phillips

SpaceX spectrum deal sends would-be rivals lower

Shares of struggling satellite services company EchoStar soared Monday, after the company — which had recently tottered close to bankruptcy — announced the sale of some of its wireless spectrum licenses to Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s SpaceX for $17 million.

The sale provides a competitive advantage to Musk’s growing Starlink satellite services business, as the licenses it is acquiring from Echostar allows Starlink to operate ground based broadband and cellphone services, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Entities that stood to be hurt by the emergence of a Musk-led SpaceX Starlink service got hit hard on the news. AST SpaceMobile, which has plans to offer a similar satellite-to-consumer cellular service, tumbled.

So did wireless tower providers like Crown Castle and American Tower. Low cost cellular service provider T-Mobile, which had a deal with SpaceX, also slumped, as Luke noted earlier, along with other large wireless telecommunication services providers.

The wireless telecommunications industry grouping within the S&P 500 was down more than 2.5% shortly after noon, making it the worst performing industry within the S&P 500 on Monday.

SpaceX strikes $17B deal to buy EchoStar's spectrum for Starlink's direct-to-phone service | TechCrunch