Traders work at the New York Stock Exchange on March 18, 2025.
NYSE
Investors are feeling as gloomy as consumers. The University of Michigan’s Survey of Consumers, which was released March 14, showed consumer sentiment plunging to its lowest since 2022. Wall Street is in a similarly dour mood, according to the March edition of both the Bank of America’s Global Fund Manager Survey and Fed Survey.
That’s reflected in the stock market, which resumed its sell-off, dimming hope — provided by a two-session winning streak on Friday and Monday — that the S&P and Nasdaq’s correction had run its course.
Not even artificial intelligence can stem the bleeding, it seems. Nvidia’s announcement of new chips did little to shift sentiment. In fact, the company’s stock closed 3.4% lower. With market watchers expecting no cuts at the U.S. Federal Reserve’s meeting Wednesday, there seems little that can lift the mood in the economy and markets, for now.
What you need to know today
U.S. stocks resume sliding
The sell-off in U.S. stocks resumed Tuesday. The S&P 500 shed 1.07%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 0.62% and the Nasdaq Composite fell 1.71%. Tesla shares slumped more than 5% after RBC Capital Markets lowered its price target on the stock. Across the Atlantic, the Stoxx 600 index rose 0.61%. Germany’s DAX index climbed 0.98% after the country’s Bundestag, or parliament, on Tuesday afternoon voted in favor of a major fiscal package.
Investor sentiment slumps: surveys
Respondents to the March Fed Survey raised the probability of recession to 36% from 23% in January while lowering their average GDP forecast for 2025 to 1.7% from 2.4%. Separately, the Bank of America’s Global Fund Manager Survey showed the biggest pullback in overall investor sentiment since March 2020. Indeed, data from Barclays revealed individual investors have not been buying the dip during the market correction.
Nvidia announces new AI chips
Nvidia unveiled at its GTC conference Tuesday Blackwell Ultra, an upgrade of its current family of artificial intelligence chips, as well as Vera Rubin, the company’s next-generation graphics processing unit, that is expected to ship in 2026. At a separate announcement, General Motors and Nvidia said they are collaborating on using AI services for vehicles and driver-assistant systems.
Google to acquire Wiz
Google has signed a “definitive agreement” to acquire Wiz, a New York-based cloud security startup, for $32 billion in an all-cash deal, the tech giant announced Tuesday. The deal, Google’s largest ever, is expected to close in 2026. “It’s going to be a great litmus test and bellwether for M&A in 2025,” said Brad Haller, senior partner for mergers and acquisitions at consulting firm West Monroe.
Trump, Putin agree on ‘narrow’ ceasefire
U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday agreed on steps toward a peace deal to end the war in Ukraine, and struck a narrow ceasefire that is set to take effect at once. “We agreed to an immediate Ceasefire on all Energy and Infrastructure,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post after his call with Putin, which lasted at least 90 minutes.
[PRO] U.S. Federal Reserve might not calm markets
The U.S. Federal Reserve on Wednesday will announce its monetary policy decision and release an update of its projections of where rates will be in the years ahead. But with the economy and markets on edge, the central bank may not have the information it needs to reassure investors — and might even spook markets further.
And finally…
Germany’s chancellor-in-waiting and leader of the Christian Democratic Union party (CDU) Friedrich Merz and Germany’s Defence Minister Boris Pistorius attend an extraordinary session of the outgoing lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, for a vote to adopt the draft law brought by the SPD and CDU/CSU parliamentary groups to reform constitutional debt rules and set up a 500 billion euro infrastructure fund, in Berlin, Germany March 18, 2025.
Annegret Hilse | Reuters
German parliament passes historic debt reform, paving the way for higher defense spend
Germany’s Bundestag on Tuesday voted in favor of a major fiscal package, which includes changes to long-standing debt policies to enable higher defense spending and a 500-billion-euro ($548 billion) infrastructure and climate fund.
Under the proposed new laws, defense and certain security expenditures above a certain threshold would no longer be subject to the debt brake, which limits how much debt the government can take on and dictates the size of the federal government’s structural budget deficit.
“Germany has given up on leading the group of fiscal frugals in Europe for the sake of boosting its economy,” Carsten Brzeski, global head of macro at ING, said.
