CNN has a bunch of fascinating charts which show the current state of the market and investor sentiment which as we all know is now at extreme fear levels.

Chart Sources

I would not take this illustration too seriously. Every now and again I come back to it. There is no question that psychology and emotion can play a powerful role in the market. For me, the illustration resonates with me because at some point I have felt all of these emotions. Actually, I think I have felt all of the downside emotions over the last 2 days, though I try not to act on them.

The only point that I would make, however, is that at some point the market overshoots because of emotion. It overshot to the upside, and now it will overshoot to the downside. It is in that idea that opportunity lies.

Anyway, enjoy the chart for what it is because we are living it.

Quote: Tariffs provide revenue, and if offset by currency adjustments, present minimal inflationary or otherwise adverse side effects, consistent with the experience in 2018-2019. While currency offset can inhibit adjustments to trade flows, it suggests that tariffs are ultimately financed by the tariffed nation, whose real purchasing power and wealth decline, and that the revenue raised improves burden sharing for reserve asset provision.

Here’s why ‘dead’ investors outperform the living

“Dead” investors often beat the living — at least, when it comes to investment returns.

A “dead” investor refers to an inactive trader who adopts a “buy and hold” investment strategy. This often leads to better returns than active trading, which generally incurs higher costs and taxes and stems from impulsive, emotional decision-making, experts said.

Doing nothing, it turns out, generally yields better results for the average investor than taking a more active role in one’s portfolio, according to investment experts.

The “biggest threat” to investor returns is human behavior, not government policy or company actions, said Brad Klontz, a certified financial planner and financial psychologist.

Perhaps I am oversimplifying things here, but bear with me for a second.

This graph is a rough schematic representing the US stock market or the S&P 500 or whatever broad market index you like.

The valuations of stocks was steadily climbing until it reached a point in mid-February 2025 when things were at an all time high (point A on the graph). Then there was a steep drop since then which we are currently experiencing right now due to tariff related turmoil in the markets.

Eventually, we will reach the bottom. Nobody knows when this will be, but there will eventually be a bottom that has either already occurred or will occur in the future (represented as point B).

The value of X in the chart represents the total percent drop that the market will experience. It could be 15-20% or it could be 50-60%, or somewhere in between.

After the drop, we will have a recovery or a period of sideways trading and then a recovery.

I am not trying to time the bottom because you don’t know you’re at the bottom when you are experiencing it. For all we know, this past Friday was the bottom.

What I am trying to do, is to figure out how much of a recovery after the most recent bottom I would want to see in order for me to decide, okay, let’s return to investing in good companies for the long term.

To give an example, let’s say that between now and June 2025, the S&P 500 drops by a total of 30% from its all time high in February. If you saw a 6% percent recovery in the S&P by August, would that make you feel like that’s enough to know that the worst is behind us and that you can confidently put your money in the market again? This would represent a 20% recovery of the value lost in all this.

The idea here is not that we try to time the market and invest exactly at the bottom, but instead that while we can’t identify when we are at the bottom, we can certainly look back and say that the bottom has passed us already and that we can still capture some large percentage of the recovery in stock prices before the market makes a new all time high (whether that be months or years from now into the future).

Lastly, I know people are going to say this to me, but please do not recommend that I DCA throughout this market downturn or that I invest a set amount on a regular basis. I know that this is a wise and effective investment strategy, but it is simply not the point of this though exercise.

Thank you

So much winning, I got tired already.

First of all, I don’t want to be misunderstood. This heat map is weekly that it reflects closing prices from Mar. 28 to Apr. 4.

Wow, what a week. Here’s a day-by-day summary,

Mar. 28 close at 5,580.94 - Mar. 31 close at 5,611.85 🟢 (0.55%)

Mar. 31 close at 5,611.85 - Apr. 1 close at 5,633.07 🟢 (0.37%)

Apr. 1 close at 5,633.07 - Apr. 2 close at 5,670.97 🟢 (0.67%)

Apr. 2 close at 5,670.97 - Apr. 3 close at 5,396.52 🔴 (-4.84%)

Apr. 3 close at 5,396.52 - Apr. 4 close at 5,078.40 🔴 (-5.90%)

We talked a lot about the April 2 tariffs. The stock market had already priced them in and made a 3-day winning streak for the S&P 500 at the beginning of the week. However, no one expected heavy new tariffs.

As I mentioned in the title, the S&P 500 dropped 9% this week. Its worst week since the COVID crash. Do you remember those times?

Mar. 6, 2020 close at 2,972.40 - Mar. 13, 2020 close at 2,711.00 🔴 (-8.80%)

As shown in the screenshot, the Information Technology sector took a major hit. Here's index-by-index summary,

Mar. 28, 2025 Closes, 🔷 S&P500: 5,580.94

🔷 Nasdaq: 17,322.99

🔷 DJI: 41,583.90

Apr. 4, 2025 Closes, 🔴 S&P500: 5,078.40 (-9.00%)

🔴 Nasdaq: 15,587.79 (-10.02%)

🔴 DJI: 38,313.94 (-7.87%)

Day-by-Day Standouts;

🔸 Monday: The week started with selling pressure due to expectations that tariffs would target all countries. Later in the day, the tariffs would be sector-based rather than country-based. This news helped indexes recover and they gained around 0.5%. 🟢

🔸 Tuesday: A quiet day. The market awaited more tariff details, but indexes managed to stay on the positive side. 🟢

🔸 Wednesday: For the second time this week, indexes opened lower following the ADP Payroll Report, but recovered again ahead of the ‘Liberation Day’ events after market close. Indexes gained over 0.5%. 🟢

🔸 Thursday: Trump announced heavy tariffs on all countries. This was unexpected and triggered a strong wave of selling. All indexes lost over 5%. 🔴

🔸 Friday: Before the market opened, China announced an additional 34% tariff increase on U.S. goods. Later, Fed Chair Jerome Powell spoke that the Fed wants to observe the impact of tariffs on prices and inflation. The market didn’t respond well and selling pressure intensified. 🔴

Before today, the stock market was expecting the first rate cut in June and also they was expecting four rate cuts for this year. This outlook might now change. Money had gone into 10-year bonds and yields down to 4%. Meanwhile, JPMorgan raised its recession probability to 60%.

In the afternoon, Trump commented on China’s response.

"China played it wrong. They panicked, the one thing they can’t afford to do!"

Do you agree with JPMorgan? Are we heading toward a recession? How do you see China's reaction and Trump's comment? How was your week? Did you open any short positions or earn from bonds? I didn’t make any trades this week. What’s your prediction for next week?

My summary ends here, but many people have asked about tools that I use. I wanted to share them. If you're not interested, feel free to skip this part. :)

🔸 Stock+: It's a mobile app where I take my screenshots. I'm using it on my iPhone and iPad. It's available on the App Store. It has an orange icon. If you're using Android, you can try to search "Heat map" or "Stock map" on the Google Play. I don't know that this app available on the Google Play, but you can find alternatives.

🔸 TradingView: I think, it's the best technical analysis tool. I'm using the web version. I'm still learning technical analysis. Yahoo Finance can be another alternative.

🔸 CME FedWatch: You can search via that keyword on Google. This website is under the CME Group. They're collecting analysts expectation about upcoming Fed rate decisions. You can check projections to 2026 December.

🔸 Investing, MarketWatch, Barron's: These are my news source. I read them for free without any subscriptions.

https://www.morningstar.com/personal-finance/it-feels-different-this-timebut-it-probably-isnt

It Feels Different This Time—but It Probably Isn’t

No matter how often market volatility strikes, behavior can be hard to manage with amplified uncertainty.

Life—and investing—comes with its share of unpleasant realities. One of the most infamous of these is behind the latest reality that is roiling the markets: taxes.

Tariffs are taxes on American consumers. They’re a blunt policy tool, often ill-suited for addressing complex real-world problems. The administration’s steep and reckless tariffs have sent global markets into upheaval and have been termed “a self-inflicted catastrophe” by Morningstar’s senior US economist.

For investors accustomed to dealing with unpleasant facts, self-inflicted damage is particularly hard to understand and endure. Volatility in markets is expected and normal, but the current situation feels like neither.

Have We Learned Anything From Previous Market Volatility?

One would hope previous experiences with market volatility would prepare us for the next round.

After all, once we’ve heard an impactful story, we don’t tend to forget how it ends. However, it can be difficult to see how each round of volatility is the same story of typical market patterns when the inciting events seem so different. For example, in 2020, investors knew intellectually that they (and the markets) had survived the last round of market volatility, but they were sent reeling because they had never faced pandemic-fueled volatility before.

Because every round of volatility feels so different, we try to reconstruct the narrative when we encounter it. So, we start by asking, “Why is this happening?” and “What should I do?”

There are always different answers to the first question; some reasons for volatility are harder to make sense of than others. This “self-inflicted catastrophe” might be the hardest to swallow yet, but that doesn’t change the answer to, “What should I do?”

Our Advice to Investors: Do What Feels Unnatural

Regardless of how different it feels this time, our guidance to investors remains the same:

• block out the noise,
• focus on your goals and what you have control over,
• don’t try to predict or time the markets, and
• stay the course.

From the standpoint of behavioral science, we know being an investor is hard. It requires people to do at least two somewhat unnatural things: delay gratification by saving instead of spending and embrace uncertainty.

Humans are not naturally wired for either of these approaches, so this requires practice and discipline. But although unnatural, saving and fortitude pay off in the long run as investors can build up wealth and make their money work for them.

Sure, the ride is not always smooth. But over the long run, economies grow, technology and trade develop, and an increasingly interconnected system emerges that creates widespread (but not evenly distributed) wealth with widespread benefits. Huge tax increases are disruptive to that progress and have understandably shaken investors’ confidence, creating the increase in uncertainty. (The last time a de facto massive national tax increase was tried in the US was in 1933, and its effects just deepened and prolonged the Great Depression, disrupting economic progress, to say the least.)

Yet, our guidance stands the same as ever because even though it feels different this time, it likely is not. Market volatility is inherent in investing, regardless of its source. We’ve endured volatility before, and evidence repeatedly shows that trying to time the market by making exits and entries underperforms staying the course.

Right now, investors are asking themselves difficult questions. What is the administration thinking? How will the markets and other countries react? What is a narrative that ties all of this together? What will happen next? People want to understand the story they’re in so they can feel confident about their actions. Here, the reality may be that this story is not as simple as we’d like, but in any case, the best action is to hold tight.

As for what’s going to happen next, we don’t know. Nor does anyone else, really. But it’s worth remembering that good investing is not about having a crystal ball and knowing what will happen next.

Investing is, as it always has been, about having discipline, finding value, seeking diversification, and having the tenacity to endure the inescapable uncertainty of investing and take a long-term perspective.

We don’t know exactly how artificial intelligence technology will disrupt labor markets, or how climate change will affect weather and food production, or how a nascent virus mutation will manifest and disturb transportation networks, or even what the current administration will do next. But the long-term principles of investing remain the same, even in the face of amplified (and self-inflicted) uncertainty.

For some background, I’m a young (mid-20’s) relatively new investor with no investments other than what I can contribute to my Roth IRA. My current US-International split is a simple 75-25 using the Fidelity Zero funds. I hedged my bets in the end, but was initially even considering going all in on US stocks due to their prior outperforming of international funds and, as per the advice that I’ve seen in subreddits like these, the global market is so interconnected these days that international equity hardly matters and there’s no harm in just investing in US stocks because those companies have a global reach anyway. Well, look where we are now. Better yet, look where we could be in the future.

Does that argument of global interconnection hold up in the face of massive US tariffs on every single country? While the current administration is so set on turning us into an autarky, other nations are looking elsewhere for reliable trade partners. Both the EU and Canada see it as a forgone conclusion that the era of US hegemony is coming to an end. China, Japan, and Korea are banding together in the face of these tariffs. There seems to be a mass decoupling of the US from the global market. And it’s not like tariffs are that easy to reverse or goodwill easy to restore once a new administration takes over. Nothing lasts forever, so why should we assume the US leading global trade should? After all, much of the historical data we rely on to make our truisms about the US stock market broadly (8-10% average annual returns for example) only goes back to the early 20th century, after the era of high tariffs and less trade agreements between nations.

I’m looking at all of this and wondering if I should reorient my international exposure for the rest of the foreseeable future. Could it be wise to do a 50-50 split instead of 75-25 for the rest of my working days? Because this doesn’t just feel like another crash or recession to patiently ride out, but more like a new era entirely.

What a rough day… What’s the mid / long - term consensus? Buy the dip? Roll over into European Markets? Convert to Cash and hedge into a high yield savings account?

Trump said:

“I think it’s going very well . . . [t]he markets are going to boom, the stock is going to boom, the country is going to boom.”

“We have an operation, like when a patient gets operated on and it’s a big thing. I said this would exactly be the way it is,” he said, an apparent reference to the selloff.