The Final Tally: Watergate Ghosts and Nvidia's Unwanted Twin

If you think this market feels historically bad, the data actually backs up your emotions (for once). Trump’s first 100 days in office have officially been worse for stocks than anyone since Richard Nixon in 1973… and Nixon literally resigned mid-scandal. The S&P 500 is down 7.9% since Inauguration Day, marking the second-worst presidential kickoff since Watergate was the only thing anyone could talk about.

And it’s not getting prettier. Today the S&P 500 slipped another 0.2%, the Dow basically stood around doing nothing (flat as a pancake), and the Nasdaq dropped 0.4% as Big Tech decided to collectively fake an injury (must’ve taken notes from World Cup soccer players). 

Last week's 4.6% rally gave some people hope… which Wolfe Research immediately squashed like an ant on the sidewalk (the optimism lasted about as long as a McDonald's ice cream machine works). They warned the bounce "screams bear market," pointing out the classic pattern of lower highs and lower lows (so that’s exciting).

As far as the biggest single stock news of the day… Nvidia fell 3.5% after The Wall Street Journal reported Huawei’s cooking up its own AI chip, the Ascend 910D, to challenge Nvidia’s H100s. Because of course they are. Tesla dropped 3% because Tesla gonna Tesla. Amazon lost 1%, Microsoft barely budged down 0.1%, and Alphabet slipped 1 (not exactly a Magnificent day). 

Over in EVs, Plug Power spiked 24% after announcing a $525 million secured debenture deal, and Peloton randomly jumped 5% on a Truist analyst upgrade (we’ll let them have this moment).

Looking ahead, the economy is about to get poked with a stick. Wednesday brings the first-quarter GDP report and the Fed’s favorite inflation reading (the PCE index), which should reveal just how much Trump’s 120%-145% tariffs are squeezing all of our bank accounts. Then Friday’s April jobs report drops… just to add some more salt to the wound. 

And if that isn’t enough to make things interesting, Apollo Global Management warned that by late May we could start seeing COVID-style empty shelves again, thanks to the tariffs wrecking supply chains (perfect, can’t wait to fight someone’s grandma over a roll of toilet paper again).

Get ready for the earnings circus too. 180 S&P 500 companies are reporting this week, including four of the Magnificent Seven. Meta and Microsoft on Wednesday, Apple and Amazon on Thursday. Plus Coca-Cola, Eli Lilly, and Chevron are all showing up to add to the chaos. Depending on how these earnings roll in, we’re either looking at a full-blown relief rally... or the market lighting itself on fire before the weekend.

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.