Nearly everyone is looking for a bottom to buy, but the current conditions on the markets have not indicated any real improvement, says Dan Wantrobski at the financial analysis firm Janney Montgomery Scott to the news agency Bloomberg.
The stock market week has been characterized by anxiety following President Donald Trump's confusing tariff message, warnings of domestic recession, global security policy uncertainty, and fears that disagreement in Congress will force a shutdown of the government apparatus.
Furthermore, a monthly index on Friday showed that American consumers' confidence in the economy plummeted in March, and it is Trump's tariff policy that is haunting.
Their expectations of the economy going forward also fell to a record low level, partly due to expected sharply rising inflation.
Black week
All three major indexes on Wall Street have fallen sharply earlier in the week, but on Friday, a sudden buying appetite came to life again.
The Dow Jones industrial index rose 1.7 percent, the broad S&P 500 index 2.1 percent, and the technology-heavy Nasdaq composite index 2.6 percent.
Not least, it was due to all seven very index-heavy technology companies called "The magnificent seven" – "the magnificent seven" – going up.
Semiconductor company Nvidia led the rally with a climb of 5.3 percent.
Seen over the week as a whole, the Dow Jones industrial index fell 3.1 percent, the S&P 500 2.3 percent, and the Nasdaq composite index 2.4 percent.
For the Dow Jones industrial index, it was the worst week since March 2023, and the other two have fallen for four weeks in a row.
"Stock market in headwind"
Analysts also believe that Friday's stock market relief is mostly a temporary fever relief in a deeper influenza that continues to ravage the economy.
Markets are struggling to determine a fair valuation for a stock market in headwind, says Yung-Yu Ma, investment chief at financial advisory firm BMO Wealth Management, to Bloomberg.
Nor is an injection in the form of an interest rate cut expected when the central bank Federal Reserve's (Fed) monetary policy committee concludes its meeting on Wednesday next week.
The market has now priced in a 97 percent probability that the Fed will leave the key interest rate unchanged in the range of 4.25-4.50 percent, reports CNBC.
