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Few.

Tariffs prove to be a continued source of volatility for the markets. The S&P 500 had been tracking higher over the past two weeks, recovering from its recent correction, but the Trump administration’s announcement of additional tariffs on imported automobiles wiped out the week’s gains. With just days until Trump’s “liberation day” on April 2nd, the market appears willing to keep selling off any notion of new tariffs or escalation in the existing trade war.

Overall, I believe we’re still looking at risk-off conditions. Friday, in particular, marked a very risk-off day with equities taking a dive and utilities, gold and long-dated Treasuries delivering big gains. Gold has blasted through the $3000 level, while the VIX and high yield spreads have begun moving higher. Again, a lot of this is tariff-driven in the short-term with long-term economic slowdown risk and lower government spending to support the economy looming in the long-term. The shorter-term has become more difficult to get a handle on because the White House’s mood on trade seems to shift every day or two.

The PCE inflation numbers came in roughly as expected, but the annualized core rate moved modestly higher. There was nothing terribly surprising here and the market largely failed to react. At this point, the likeliest outcome for 2025 may still be two rate cuts by year-end, but there’s a lot of potential variability. A slowdown in growth would favor more rate cuts over the next 12 months, but inflation isn’t making progress towards the Fed’s 2% target and tariffs (Trump this week called some of the Canadian tariffs “permanent”) are likely going to add to the pressure. With the government dialing back its spending and the Fed at least hesitant to loosen conditions too much, this could become a tough pair of headwinds for the market to fight.