The Final Tally: One Trump Quote Gives Traders Amnesia… China Rips 11% on China Rumors

Just a few days after I wrote about the dreaded “death cross”... that infamous chart formation where a stock index’s 50-day moving average drops below its 200-day. Historically, this little crossover has been Wall Street’s version of the Grim Reaper for short-term gains. It usually signals that pain is coming... before the eventual bounce. But President Trump must’ve missed that technical analysis email.

Instead of letting the market stew in technical gloom, he walked into Monday like a superhero, hinting that the next round of reciprocal tariffs (originally set to land like a hammer on April 2) might actually be... softer. Maybe even delayed. Maybe even narrower. (“We may take less than what they’re charging because they’ve charged us so much,” he said, which in Trump-speak means he hasn’t made a decision yet but wants you to think he has. (And also, please buy stocks.)

Wall Street took the hint and ran with it. The Dow ripped 524 points higher, the S&P 500 gained 1.6%, and the Nasdaq soared 2.1%. Suddenly, all those “death cross” doomsayers (hi, yes, me) looked like they forgot how easily this market gets high on hope.

Tesla, which had been falling for nine straight weeks, exploded 11% (its best day since November) on rumors that Trump’s auto tariffs might be shelved and that China could soon approve Tesla’s Full Self-Driving software (if you bought the dip, congrats). Chip stocks lit up too… AMD rose over 6%, Nvidia 3%. Even Palantir, the defense-tech company with the world’s most eccentric CEO hair, rallied 5%.

On a sad note, 23andMe collapsed over 50% after filing for Chapter 11 and losing its CEO. 

Bitcoin climbed 3% to hover near $88K. Crypto miners Riot and Marathon shot up 7% and 13% respectively… classic “risk-on” behavior. Pinterest also got a 4.5% lift after Guggenheim upgraded it, saying AI ads might save the day.

Oh, and to bring up a topic that feels like a predictable weather pattern, Trump also teased the idea of privatizing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac through some shiny new sovereign wealth fund (why not roll taxpayer-backed mortgage giants into a mystery pot?)

So yeah, the charts were screaming pain, but Trump threw the market a bone instead. Forget the death cross… the only thing crossing now are all our fingers.

If you read all of this, congrats for having a 10 second attention span (better than me). As always, here’s our heatmap for today.