Stocks waver as worries around Trump tariffs persist: Live updates

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on March 12, 2025 in New York City.

Spencer Platt | Getty Images

Stocks wavered as investors digested the latest tariff threat from President Donald Trump, while they pored through new U.S. inflation figures.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 68 points, or 0.2%. The S&P 500 dropped 0.3%, and the Nasdaq Composite shed 0.6%.

Trump took to his Truth Social platform to threaten 200% tariffs on all alcoholic products coming from countries in the European Union in retaliation for the bloc’s 50% tariff on whisky. “This will be great for the Wine and Champagne businesses in the U.S.,” he wrote.

Worries over U.S. trade policy have hurt stocks this week.

The S&P 500 and Nasdaq are respectively on track for losses of 3.3%and 3.7% this week. The Dow is off 3.6% in the period, heading for its worst week since March 2023. The broad market index briefly dipped into correction territory on Tuesday, down 10% from a record set in February.

However, investors got more encouraging inflation data Thursday. February’s producer price index — which measures the cost of producing consumer goods and is a good indicator of inflationary pressures — was flat that month, compared with an expected increase. This, alongside a softer-than-expected February consumer price index reading, may have helped ease traders’ concerns about the direction of the economy and the impact tariffs could have on inflation.

Though market strategists have been watching for a technical bounce after the recent sell off, some say the latest inflation data likely isn’t enough to lead to a sizable rebound. Concerns over Trump’s trade policies remain a key hangover on investor sentiment, and they throw into question how the Federal Reserve may proceed on interest rates.

“We still believe the next Fed rate move is lower, but it is hard to have high confidence with the impact of tariffs still uncertain,” said Scott Helfstein, Global X’s head of investment strategy. “The key question is whether tariffs will have a greater impact on growth or prices. In recent weeks, the rates market has signaled that weaker growth is the bigger concern with three cuts now being priced for this year.”

Gold closing in on record high from Feb. 24

Gold’s April-dated futures were last trading near 2,963.3, near their highs of the session. They were closing in on their record high of 2,974 from Feb. 24.

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Gold Futures YTD

Gold has gained 1.6% week to day, pacing for their second weekly gain. The VanEck Gold Miners ETF (GDX), which encompasses both gold and silver miners, rose 2% and was on pace for its third straight day of gains.

— Lisa Kailai Han

Stocks open lower

Intel, Adobe among the names making moves before the bell

Check out the names making moves in the premarket:

Intel – The stock jumped 10% after the company said it had appointed Lip-Bu Tan – who was previously the chief executive of software company Cadence Design Systems – as its new CEO. Tan is replacing interim co-CEOs David Zinsner and MJ Holthaus.
UiPath – Shares fell 18% following the software company’s fourth-quarter revenue and first-quarter sales guidance missing Wall Street estimates. For the fourth quarter, UiPath posted revenue of $424 million, below the $425 million that analysts surveyed by LSEG were expecting. The company also expects revenue for the current quarter to come in between $330 million and $335 million, while analysts were looking for $368 million.
Adobe – Shares dropped 6% on the heels of Adobe issuing lackluster fiscal second-quarter guidance. The company sees earnings of $4.95 per share to $5 per share on revenue of $5.77 billion to $5.82 billion in the period. Analysts had penciled in earnings of $5 per share on $5.8 billion in revenue.

Read the full list here.

— Sean Conlon

Wholesale inflation unchanged in February

The producer price index, a measure of wholesale inflation, was flat in February — another potential sign that inflation pressures may be ebbing. Economists polled by Dow Jones expected a month-over-month increase of 0.3%.

— Fred Imbert

Russia rejects Ukraine ceasefire deal, report says

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin walks along a corridor as he visits a control centre of the Russian armed forces in the course of Russia-Ukraine conflict in the Kursk region, Russia, March 12, 2025, in this still image taken from video. Russian Pool/Reuters TV via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS – THIS IMAGE WAS PROVIDED BY A THIRD PARTY.

Reuters Tv | Via Reuters

The proposed 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine has been rejected by a Russian negotiator, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday morning.

“This is nothing other than a temporary time-out for Ukrainian soldiers, nothing more. Our goal is a long-term peaceful resolution,” Yuri Ushakov, a senior aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin, told Russian state television on Thursday, according to the report. “Steps that imitate peaceful actions are not needed.”

Ukraine had previously agreed to the deal.

— Jesse Pound

Morgan Stanley double upgrades Houlihan Lokey

Houlihan Lokey is a defensive play as market volatility pressures investment banking, per Morgan Stanley.

The firm double-upgraded its rating on Houlihan Lokey shares to overweight from underweight, citing its lower earnings volatility. Because the firm’s revenues are more tied to restructuring, which is counter-cyclical, relative to its competitors, its revenues are more resilient, per analyst Betsy Graseck.

“Our Overweight rating reflects a way to play the bear scenario, as HLI generally holds up better than peers in risk-off environments and has a lower beta to the overall M&A cycle,” Graseck wrote in a note on Thursday.

— Hakyung Kim

Barclays downgrades American Eagle Outfitters

A view of an American Eagle Outfitters store in Arlington, Virginia.

Erin Scott | Reuters

Barclays is stepping away from American Eagle Outfitters as the macro backdrop deteriorates.

The firm downgraded shares of the apparel company to underweight from equal weight. Analyst Adrienne Yih also lowered her price target to $10 from $17.

“We expect the weakening macro to weigh on teen spending in 2025,” Yih wrote in a note on Wednesday.

Rising uncertainty from President Donald Trump’s tariffs is another headwind for the company, per Yih. American Eagle manufactured around a fifth of its global production in China last year. Potential tariffs on Vietnam are another risk for the company, which made up to 20% of its goods in the country.

— Hakyung Kim

Asia-Pacific stocks fall after soft U.S. inflation report pushes two Wall Street benchmarks up; Seven & i shares rise as much as 3.6%

Asia-Pacific markets fell on Thursday after a soft inflation report in the U.S. helped two of the three benchmarks on Wall Street reverse course from two days of losses.

The consumer price index — a broad-based measure of costs across the U.S. economy — increased 0.2% month-on-month in February, putting the annual inflation rate at 2.8%.

Over in Japan, the benchmark Nikkei 225 ended the day flat at 36,790.03 while the broader Topix index edged up 0.13% to close at 2,698.36.

Shares of Seven & i Holdings gained as much as 3.60%, following Canadian convenience store operator Alimentation Couche-Tard’s press conference on buying the 7-Eleven operator.

Couche-Tard, which owns the Circle-K convenience store chain, has been pursuing Seven & i for months and put in a $47 billion bid for the Japanese retail giant. This would be Japan’s largest-ever foreign buyout if the deal is completed. However, Couche-Tard has so far mostly received frosty reception from Seven & i.

Couche-Tard founder and Executive Chairman Alain Bouchard said the company has had “many discussions” with Seven & i’s new CEO Stephen Dacus, “but it has always stopped at the regulatory ask, the thing that we cannot overcome.”

South Korea’s Kospi index closed flat at 2,573.64. Meanwhile, the small-cap Kosdaq fell 0.92% to close at 722.80, reversing course from gains earlier in the session

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index dipped 0.57% to close at 23,463.26 while mainland China’s CSI 300 fell 0.40% to 3,911.58, in choppy trade.

Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 ended the day 0.48% lower at 7,749.10. This is the third consecutive day that the index is ending in negative territory.

India’s benchmark Nifty 50 was down 0.18%, while the BSE Sensex was flat as at 1.30 p.m. local time.

— Amala Balakrishner

Dan Niles says tech sell-off is driven by revenue estimates, not tariffs

Hedge fund manager Dan Niles believes megacap tech stocks were knocked down by concerns of revenue growth instead of tariffs.

“It’s not the tariffs knocking these tech stocks down. It is the fact that revenue estimates were six out of the seven biggest in the Mag Seven all went down for Q1 after reporting Q4,” he said on CNBC’s “Closing Bell.”

The founder of Niles Investment Management said he bought the dip in these beaten-down shares this week. Going into 2025, Niles named cash as a top pick for the first time since the market drop in 2022. He also didn’t recommend Mag Seven names in his top five picks.

— Yun Li

We’ve largely seen a rotation rather than a selloff, strategist says

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on March 12, 2025 in New York City.

Spencer Platt | Getty Images

Much of the recent market action can be contributed to an unwinding of investors’ positioning, according to Michael Green, chief strategist of Simplify Asset Management.

“The really key thing that I would highlight is that rather than an outright sell-off, so far what we’ve seen is largely rotation,” he told CNBC in an interview. “There’s been a combination of money rotating out of the United States and into Europe, Japan, Canada. To a certain extent that’s contributed to the weakness in the dollar as that capital account money has returned to their home countries.”

Green added: “That likely puts additional pressure on forward inflation trends, and so offset some of the benefits of the weaker economy. It also suggest that there may actually be more issues with inflation than we had anticipated.