Markets Bleed After Greed-Fueled Rally—Traders Scramble as Reality Bites

Wall Street’s sugar rush ends in a hangover as indices snap winning streak. Bulls retreat faster than a DeFi project after an audit.

Gravity works—even in finance: After weeks of irrational exuberance (and maybe some stimmy-fueled hopium), the S&P 500 finally remembers what ’risk’ means. Cue the margin calls.

Bonus cynical jab: ’Technical correction’—that’s what finance bros call it when their leveraged ETF bets implode.

As trading began on Monday, the stock market dipped, showing signs of slowdown after a positive previous week, with the S&P 500 boasting one of its longest positive streaks.

The S&P 500 remained high for nine days in a row by the time Friday trading closed off. That marks its longest such streak since 2004. While investors have been concerned about how low the stock market has dipped since President Donald Trump instituted tariffs shortly after taking office, the S&P 500 regained all of those lost points. It is not sitting at 5,656 and is down 0.59% from the previous day.

The Dow Jones and the Nasdaq Composite were both up on Friday, gaining 1.4% and 1.5%, but now they are trending down. The Dow fell 0.30% as the market opened Monday, and the Nasdaq index dropped 0.74%.

Traders should expect that news coming out of the Federal Reserve policy meeting starting Tuesday will impact the stock market. The meeting will cover how tariffs are affecting the markets and will also look at the overall state of the economy.

The jobs report on Friday was mildly positive. Unemployment did not move, sticking at 4.2%, and 177,000 new jobs were added in April. President Trump reacted to the news with a social media post stating that the economy is very strong. However, many people are very worried about how tariffs will affect their jobs. Will these tariffs result in higher prices and less profit for companies, and will those companies most impacted by the tariffs try to cut costs by cutting staff?

In a recent statement, Trump said that tariffs will make the U.S rich, but investors need to be aware that tariffs will not impact everyone equally. Despite the stock market regaining much of what was lost over the last few months, there is still grave concern that tariffs and the ongoing trade war between the United States and China (as well as other countries) will hurt businesses and consumers, even if the government grows rich.