Why the Stock Market May End This Week on a Low Note
United States stock indices all fell on Thursday as trading closed off, and they could be lower still for Friday’s trading due to tariff fears, strong inflation, and poor retail expectations for 2025.
The Dow Jones led a low stock market in the closing hours of Thursday trading with a drop of 1.01%. The Nasdaq Composite followed with a decline of 0.47%, and the S&P 500 took up the tail with a loss of 0.43%.
This week saw the S&P 500 climb to new heights, but much of those gains were lost during Thursday trading as retailer Walmart (WMT) reported poor revenue expectations for 2025. Walmart did well in 2024, with earnings per share up, but not as high as Wall Street predicted.
Why Friday May Be Slow for the Market
Very little upward movement is expected for today as no major earnings reports are set to be released. The University of Michigan will be issuing a consumer sentiment reading, and the housing market will receive new data from home sales as January’s report comes in.
Otherwise, though, this should be a slow stock market news day, and we may see further decline from the three indices and from Walmart as well. The WMT price ticked up 0.25% in premarket trading as the stock stabilized, but that may reverse as tariff fears continue.
The market rose on Wednesday even with those tariff fears looming, but most of those gains were destroyed in Thursday’s trading. The Federal Reserve issued a statement about their concerns over tariffs from the current US government administration and its impact on inflation. The concern among investors is that there will be very limited interest rate cuts this year if some of those tariff fears play out. The Fed says policy change needs to happen to lower inflation and that without changes, the inflation rate will remain high.
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