In the global markets, the decline in the technology sector and the announcement of inflation in the USA, which was lower than expected, attracted the most attention.
In New York, all three leading stock indexes fell on a weekly basis, and the NASDAQ the most, which lost a good two percent. At the beginning of the week, optimism was present in the artificial intelligence sector (this was mainly observed in the shares of software companies), but in the second half of the week the trend was again downward. UBS downgraded the US technology sector. Uncertainty is increasingly spreading to other sectors, such as the financial sector. Shares of brokerage Charles Schwab have fallen 10 percent since Monday.
Wild market
Interestingly, the ever-lower yields on long-term US bonds (the 10-year yield is just above four percent) have not helped Wall Street. Inflation in the US, measured by the consumer price index, was 2.4 percent on an annual basis in January, which is lower than expected.
The market is becoming more and more volatile. Over the past eight trading days, 115 stocks in the S&P 500 have fallen at least 7 percent in a single day. That hasn’t happened since the dot-com crash about 25 years ago, SEEbiz reports. Interestingly, in the past the market has fallen significantly when so many stocks have performed so poorly, losing an average of 34 percent, but this time the S&P 500 is only 1.5 percent away from its all-time high.
Trump’s tariffs are not helping the American consumer
Shares of the social network Pinterest fell nearly 17 percent on Friday after the company disappointed with its latest quarter profit and its outlook for the current quarter is uncertain. According to executives, this is mainly due to higher tariffs faced by their main customers, the big US advertisers.
Meanwhile, the New York branch of the US Federal Reserve confirmed in a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research that most (90 percent) of the costs incurred by Trump’s tariffs were passed on to US companies and consumers in the first 11 months of 2025, contrary to Trump’s promises that foreign companies would foot the “bill”. The average customs rate in 2025 was 13 percent, after it was 2.6 percent the year before. The average American household spent a thousand dollars more last year because of tariffs.
The rise of Siemens Energy
The Frankfurt stock index DAX rose by 0.8 percent last week. On Thursday, Siemens Energy, with a market capitalization of just over 210 billion euros, became the most valuable German company at least for a day, overtaking SAP, which this year (its shares have fallen 15 percent) shares the fate of other major software manufacturers. Siemens, relying on the wave of artificial intelligence, achieved better-than-expected results in the last quarter, and at the same time increased the estimate of this year’s profit and dividend – from 5.20 to 5.35 euros.
Mercedes tells a different story. Last year, it had a profit of 5.3 billion euros, which is half less than the previous year. The reason for the worse results are problems on the Chinese market, higher tariffs in the US and the rising value of the euro. The proposed dividend is EUR 3.50 per share, which is lower than last year (4.30).
