Investors panicked in April after President Donald Trump announced sweeping new tariffs. Fears that the levies would reignite inflation and spark a global trade war drove a 19% top-to-bottom decline in the S&P 500.
Trump followed with a series of months-long pauses on many of the tariffs. The market shook off the initial shock, and things have been relatively placid since. Even after a new round of tariffs went into effect in August, and even though the Federal Reserve has yet to slash interest rates as many investors had hoped, the broad U.S. stock market is up more than 8% so far on the year.
But don’t expect the smooth sailing to last forever.
“We’re going to see volatility,” Wei Li, chief investment strategist at the BlackRock Investment Institute told CNBC Make It shortly after the midyear mark. “We’re going to have headlines creating a lot of uncertainty and markets have the tendency of being carried away one way or another, both on the downside and on the upside.”
Rather than getting caught up in the hubbub when things get choppy again, make a plan now that will allow you to navigate the next bout of market volatility, says Roger Young, thought leadership director at T. Rowe Price.
