Wall Street‘s main indexes rebounded on Tuesday as investors shifted their focus to corporate earnings following President Donald Trump’s escalating criticism of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, which triggered a sharp selloff in the previous session.
With a wave of quarterly earnings reports being released, investors are looking for clues on how companies are handling the uncertainty created by tariffs and their outlook for potential future impacts on earnings.
US stocks surged on Tuesday as companies reported stronger-than-expected profits. The S&P 500 gained 2.6%, fully recovering from its decline on Monday, which was fuelled by concerns over President Donald Trump’s trade war and his criticism of the Federal Reserve’s chair. The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 1,021 points, or 2.7%, while the Nasdaq composite rose 3%. Strong earnings reports from Equifax, PulteGroup, and 3M were among the key drivers of the rally.
At 12:33 PM GMT-4 on April 22, 2025, Wall Street’s major indexes rebounded strongly, with investors focusing on corporate earnings reports. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) surged 1,071.06 points, or 2.81%, reaching 39,241.47. The Nasdaq climbed by 525.01 points, or 3.31%, to 16,395.91, and the S&P 500 gained 146.74 points, or 2.84%, settling at 5,304.94. The recovery followed a sharp selloff in the previous session driven by President Trump’s criticism of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.
In commodity markets, oil prices rose 1.95 to $65.03, marking a 3.09% increase, while gold dropped 17.4 points, or 0.51%, to 3,407.9. The US 10-year Treasury yield slipped to 4.377%, down by 0.028, while the EUR/USD exchange rate fell by 0.006 to 1.145. The VIX, which measures market volatility, decreased by 3.29 points, or 9.73%, signaling a reduction in investor fear.
Earlier, Futures for the S&P 500 rose 0.8% before the bell, still far from recovering the 2.4% loss from Monday. Futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average also rose 0.8%, and Nasdaq futures gained 0.9%. Both had slumped more than 2% the day before as Trump stepped up his public criticism of Powell.
Trump had been demanding that the central bank lower its key interest rate to boost the economy. Trump had called Powell “a major loser” and said that energy and grocery prices were “substantially lower,” claiming that the central bank no longer needed to keep interest rates elevated to suppress inflation.
The Fed had resisted lowering rates quickly, fearing that it could reignite inflation after it had soared to more than 9% during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic three years ago.
Any attempt to unseat Powell would have set off a crisis in global financial markets. While Wall Street favored lower rates because they generally boosted stock prices, the bigger concern was that a less independent Fed could struggle to keep inflation under control. Such a move could weaken, if not destroy, the United States’ reputation as the world’s safest place to keep cash.
Longer-term yields had been rising recently due to doubts about the United States’ standing in the global economy. The yield on the 10-year Treasury had climbed to 4.43% overnight before settling at 4.39% in the morning. That was still up from 4.34% at the end of last week and about 4% earlier that month, a substantial move for the bond market.
The US dollar edged down to 140.24 Japanese yen from 140.80 yen. The dollar had been weakening against the yen and other currencies, briefly dipping as low as 139 yen on Monday, a 52-week low.
In equities trading early Tuesday, First Solar surged 7.2% after the Department of Commerce finalized harsher-than-expected solar tariffs on some Southeast Asian communities.
Northrop Grumman tumbled 10.6% after it reported that its first-quarter sales had fallen from a year ago. The military contractor also saw its profit nearly halved due to a big loss related to higher manufacturing costs for its B-21 bomber program.
Technology companies, which had taken some of the biggest hits during the recent market volatility, inched up in premarket Tuesday. Nvidia and Meta Platforms rose less than 1% before the bell.
Meta shares had declined for seven consecutive days, the longest losing streak for the company since April 2023.
One day after plummeting another 6%, Tesla shares inched up less than 1% in premarket trading ahead of its quarterly earnings report later that day.
Elon Musk’s electric car company had already reported that its first-quarter car sales dropped by 13% from the same time last year. This decline had occurred against a backdrop of vandalism, widespread protests, and calls for a consumer boycott amid a backlash to Musk’s high-profile role in overseeing a cost-cutting purge of US government agencies.
Tesla shares were down about 40% since the beginning of 2025.
In Europe at midday, France’s CAC 40 and Germany’s DAX each declined 0.7%, while Britain’s FTSE 100 was mostly unchanged.
Trading was cautious in Asia, where the benchmark Nikkei 225 lost 0.2% to finish at 34,220.60. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 was virtually unchanged, inching down less than 0.1% to 7,816.70. South Korea’s Kospi lost nearly 0.1% to 2,486.64. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng added nearly 0.8% to 21,562.32, while the Shanghai Composite added 0.3% to 3,299.76.
Trump’s tariffs and China’s retaliatory measures hung as a shadow over the region.
“Across Asia, there was undoubtedly a sense of urgency to get to the negotiation table even as striking a deal at an appropriate cost had been tough,” said Tan Boon Heng from Mizuho Bank’s Asia & Oceania Treasury Department.
“China’s warning to countries not to resolve US tariffs by striking deals at the expense of Beijing’s interests revealed the geo-economic polarization.”
In energy trading, benchmark US crude gained 93 cents to $63.34 a barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, rose 88 cents to $67.14 a barrel.
