Page One

The S&P 500 futures are down 199 points and are trading 3.5% below fair value, the Nasdaq 100 futures are down 806 points and are trading 4.1% below fair value, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average futures are down 1,232 points and are trading 2.9% below fair value.

Contracts linked to the S&P 500, Nasdaq 100, and Dow industrials are significantly lower after President Trump's tariff announcements.

The administration imposed a 10% baseline tariff on global imports, and higher rates for 60 other countries including China at 34% (bringing the total tariff rate to 54%), the EU at 20%, and India at 26%. The 10% baseline tariffs go into effect April 5 and the higher rates on individual countries go into effect April 9.

Pre-open declines in large-cap tech names, which are responding to the tariff news, have contributed to this morning's strong negative bias.

Treasury yields are sharply lower in a safe-haven bid. The 10-yr yield is down 13 basis points to 4.07% and the 2-yr yield is down 11 basis points to 3.79%.

Initial jobless claims for the week ending March 29 decreased by 6,000 to 219,000 (Briefing.com consensus 224,000) from last week’s revised reading of 225,000 (from 224,000). Continuing jobless claims for the week ending March 22 increased by 56,000 to 1.903 million from last week’s revised rate of 1.847 million (from 1.856 million).

The key takeaway from the report is that initial claims remained at a relatively low level while continuing claims increased to their highest level since November 2021, suggesting that people are having an increasingly difficult time returning to work.

The February Trade Balance showed a narrowing in the trade deficit to $122.7 billion (Briefing.com consensus -$121.0 billion) from a revised deficit of $130.7 billion (from -$131.4 billion) in January. February imports were $0.1 billion less than January imports while February exports were $8.0 billion more than January exports.

The key takeaway from the report is that while there was some sequential narrowing in the trade deficit, the deficit remained in record territory as front-running of purchases continued ahead of April’s implementation of tariffs.

In corporate news:

• Apple (AAPL): sliding ahead of the open after tariff news; Executives file notice of proposed sale of common stock pursuant to rule 144
• Tesla (TSLA): sliding ahead of the open after tariff news; CEO Elon Musk denies report that he will soon leave role in government
• Microsoft (MSFT): sliding ahead of the open after tariff news; Microsoft is pulling back on some data center projects, according to Bloomberg
• RH (RH): misses by $0.34, misses on revs; guides Q1 revs below consensus; guides FY26 revs below consensus