By Jamie McGeever
ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) – TRADING DAY
Nasdaq notches third-biggest rise this year
The last full trading week of the quarter got off to a roaring start across most major stock markets on Monday, with investors buoyed by reports that the Trump administration’s tariff blitz scheduled for April 2 may not be as heavy as feared.
A solid pick-up in U.S. business activity helped cement the positive tone on Wall Street, and investors bought back some of the shares they’d aggressively sold off recently like Big Tech.
Europe ended largely flat, but benchmark Asian, U.S. and global equity indices all rose sharply. Bond yields spiked higher, while ‘safe-haven’ gold fell for a third day to clock its longest losing streak since November.
All 10 sectors in the S&P 500 rose, led by a 4% surge in consumer cyclicals on hopes that a more targeted approach to tariffs means goods prices won’t rise so much. That was the sector’s biggest rise since November 2022.
Some of the biggest individual gainers on Wall Street were in tech, led by a 12% surge in Tesla.
If trade tensions cool, could investors look at U.S. assets in a more positive light? I’ll dig into broader U.S. capital flows trends below, but first, a round-up of Monday’s markets.
Today’s Key Market Moves.
Trade war fears haven’t dissipated completely and the situation remains extremely fluid. While Trump said on Monday he may give a “lot of countries” breaks on tariffs, he still plans to announce more in the next few days on cars, and then on lumber and chips further down the line.
And any hopes of inflation relief from less of a blanket approach to tariffs from Washington may be tempered by another rise in oil prices after Trump said he will impose a 25% tariff on countries that buy oil and gas from Venezuela.
The price of Brent and WTI crude futures rose more than 1% on Monday to the highest in three weeks. That was the fourth daily increase in a row.
If Monday was a slightly more optimistic day for investors regarding global trade tensions, it was less encouraging on the interest rate front.
Atlanta Federal Reserve President Raphael Bostic said on Monday he now only sees the central bank delivering one quarter percentage point rate cut this year because he expects inflation won’t come down as quickly as hoped.
Bostic had previously expected the Fed would cut rates twice this year. That remains the median view across the Fed’s 19 policymaking officials as last week’s revised projections showed, but the underlying weight of views is shifting.
In Asia, meanwhile, details emerged of Beijing’s latest attempts to maintain strong relations with many of the world’s biggest businesses. China’s economy tsar, Vice Premier He Lifeng, met with the heads of Apple, Pfizer, Mastercard, Cargill and others on Sunday.
There’s no doubting the huge improvement in investor sentiment towards China following the fiscal and monetary measures announced by Beijing since September, and China’s markets look set to end the quarter on a high note.
Foreign demand for U.S. assets might not be dead yet
As the first quarter draws to a close, financial markets are at a crossroads. We could be seeing the early stages of a tectonic shift in global investment flows, with a dramatic decline in demand for U.S. assets from abroad. But it’s also possible that this is simply a pause and that the ‘U.S. exceptionalism’ narrative has more chapters to go.
Net sales of U.S. equities by foreign central banks reached $28 billion in January, and net sales of all U.S. assets by the private sector totaled $74.8 billion, according to official Treasury International Capital flows data.
These were, respectively, the fastest-ever pace of U.S. equity selling by the official sector in a single month, and the biggest monthly outflow of U.S. assets by private sector investors in a year.
This abrupt reversal in flows goes a long way to explaining the eye-opening underperformance of U.S. stocks against the rest of the world so far this year. This gap has approached 15 percentage points in the past few weeks.
Of course, one month does not a trend make, and it will take many more months of similar flows to reverse the tide – or more accurately, the tsunami – of foreign capital that flooded into U.S. markets in recent years.
TIC data shows that private sector net capital inflows into U.S. stocks and bonds last year totaled $980 billion, following a net inflow of $668 billion the year before and $1.6 trillion in 2022. That’s net purchases from overseas investors and net selling of foreign assets by U.S. investors.
The total figure is worth repeating. In the last three calendar years, private sector investors poured a net $3.25 trillion into U.S. assets. Little wonder that foreign investors at the end of last year owned 18% of U.S. stocks, according to Goldman Sachs. That’s a record-high share going back to 1945.
At an average of more than $1 trillion a year, that pace of net inflows was unlikely to be maintained. But does that mean that January’s pace of selling will persist? Not necessarily.
PARADIGM SHIFT?
Goldman Sachs’ chief U.S. equity strategist David Kostin and his team estimate that foreign investors will remain buyers of U.S. equities this year, lured by the weaker dollar, attractive prices due to the recent correction, and the unparalleled liquidity of U.S. markets.
They reckon overseas investors will be just as committed this year as they were last year, buying a net $300 billion compared with $304 billion in 2024. They do note, however, that “elevated political and economic uncertainty also create elevated uncertainty around that forecast.”
Appetite for U.S. assets will remain strong as long the U.S. maintains an innovation-friendly tax system, flexible financial system, commitment to property rights and a relatively low regulatory burden, agrees Standard Chartered’s head of G10 FX strategy Steven Englander.
“Cyclical ups and downs in equity and other asset prices would not erase this attractiveness in the long term, even if the correction in U.S. equities continues, provided the underlying positives remain in place,” he says.
It is important to note that TIC flows reports are released with a lag, meaning January’s outflows don’t account for the notable market shifts seen in recent weeks. The February and March reports could show massive outflows too.
There are good reasons why foreign investors have backed away from U.S. assets in recent weeks – stretched valuations, market concentration, the emergence of China’s DeepSeek artificial intelligence model, Germany’s watershed fiscal U-turn, and concern surrounding the Trump administration’s trade and foreign policy agendas.
This is all to say it remains unclear whether the recent shift in investment flows is temporary or represents a true paradigm shift. The next few months will be critical.
What could move markets tomorrow?
If you have more time to read today, here are a few articles I recommend to help you make sense of what happened in markets today.
I’d love to hear from you, so please reach out to me with comments at . You can also follow me at [@ReutersJamie and @reutersjamie.bsky.social.]
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(By Jamie McGeever, editing by Nia Williams)
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