Stocks fell on Thursday as tech companies sold down following Nvidia’s (NVDA) latest earnings report, while investors assessed the economy in light of President Trump’s recent tariff vows.
The S&P 500 (^GSPC) sank over 1.6%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) plunged 2.8%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJI) fell 0.4 percent. Investors focused on Nvidia’s quarterly earnings beat, which showed room for growth while alleviating concerns over DeepSeek and declining AI demand. The results elicited a tepid response from Wall Street, which was skeptical of the company’s earnings projections. Nvidia’s shares dropped more than 8% after erasing early morning gains.
Meanwhile, there were fresh signals of a slowing US economy. According to data released Thursday, GDP increased at an unrevised annualized rate of 2.3% last quarter, reflecting a deceleration from the prior quarter. Weekly initial unemployment claims increased to 242,000, above experts’ expectations of 221,000, indicating a deteriorating labor market. As the route to interest rate reduction becomes more murky, investors will look to Friday’s publication of the Federal Reserve’s favored inflation barometer, the Personal Consumption Expenditures index, for economic cues. Amid these recent economic indications, all eyes were on President Trump’s latest escalation of tariff threat when he declared in a social media post that tariffs on Mexico and Canada would go into force as planned on March 4.
He also repeated plans to impose further taxes on China. This comes after Trump pledged on Wednesday to levy 25% tariffs on the European Union. Bitcoin prices, which some regard as a measure of trust in Trump, continued to decline from a post-election high, dipping below $84,000 to reach their lowest level since November.
