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With the post-election market rally starting to fade in late February, Wall Street was not having a banner year even before President Donald Trump’s steep “reciprocal” tariff announcement on April 2 sent stocks into a tailspin. What a difference a few weeks make. The S & P 500 has mounted a remarkable rally off its 2025 closing low on April 8, the day before Trump imposed and hours later paused most of those country-specific tariffs, except for those on Chinese imports. That rebound registered another milestone this week, in the wake of Monday’s U.S.-China tariff relief news : The S & P 500 turned positive for the year. The index was modestly higher Friday, on pace for a fifth straight positive day. It is an outcome that would have been hard to believe in the throes of the tariff-driven sell-off, which briefly took the index into bear market territory , defined as more than 20% below a recent high. On April 2, the S & P 500 was already down 3.6% year to date — partially driven lower by concerns that Trump’s tariff actions up to that point could tip the economy into a recession. The artificial intelligence trade also had cooled off, turning the market leaders in recent years such as Club Nvidia into anchors on the index. While the S & P 500 remains more than 3.5% below its Feb. 19 closing high , the fact that it’s higher on a year-to-date basis drives home just how powerful this multiweek recovery rally has been. It also underscores the importance of remaining invested when the going gets tough, as Jim Cramer urged during the worst of the selling. Several Club stocks – Nvidia among them – have traveled similar paths to the S & P 500. Through Thursday’s session, eight stocks in the portfolio checked two boxes: (1) were both lower for the year on the April 2 close — a sign of investor skepticism about their outlooks even before the reciprocal tariffs came in much more aggressively than expected — and (2) were in positive territory for the year. In other words, shares of these companies have erased more than just their post-April 2 losses. These are the eight stocks, with their year-to-date advances in parentheses, broken up into two charts. Meta Platforms (up 10%) Goldman Sachs (up 7.6%) Microsoft (up 7.5%) Palo Alto Networks (up 6%) Texas Roadhouse (up 4.6%) Disney (up 0.8%) Nvidia (up 0.4%) Broadcom (up 0.3%) Where will the market and these individual stocks go in the next few days, weeks, and months? Nobody can answer that question with certainty, even if the easing U.S.-China trade tensions and the flurry of business deals announced this week during Trump’s Mideast tour are positives for market sentiment right now. (See here for a full list of the stocks in Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust’s portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED.
A trader works on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange on April 22, 2025.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters
With the post-election market rally starting to fade in late February, Wall Street was not having a banner year even before President Donald Trump’s steep “reciprocal” tariff announcement on April 2 sent stocks into a tailspin. What a difference a few weeks make.
