I mean far be it from me to speak in defense of Trump's idiotic trade war but I don't know in what world 30 points off the SNP500 is considered "plummeting". The DOW fell 350 points!!! Yes, and it's still sitting quite comfortably near all time highs at $44,544. That's barely a blip on the radar.
stock value is also strictly based on perceived value rather than real value. companies are incentivized to lie about their performance to inflate their stock value for their biggest shareholders
They can't lie about the dividends they paid out, and dividends are a big part of perceived value. To lots of people, they are the only important part.
It's has always seemed insane ro me that those of us lucky enough to have IRAs of any type, some with employer match, never move the stock market. Once or twice a month, millions of people add money to the stock market and there is no change. You'd think you could place index bets for it to go up when those hit the market, but their value has clearly been captured by day trading ahead of time. So stupid.
Most of those are in diverse packages, though. So yeah, millions of people add in once or twice a month, but it's across tons of companies/industries. And it does move the market, but there's also tens of trillions of dollars in the market so the amount moved isn't super noticeable to anyone really but those that watch the market for a living.
well, making tons of money on the stock market isn't even tied to making record profits, since it's nothing really more than a popularity contest between rich hacks.
An honest reporting would use percentage movement, in which case this drop was .7%. Typical activity. The first circuit breaker put in place to prevent a stock run begins at a 7% drop, and that only stops things for 15 mins because it's not even critical yet at that point.
But to the average person who knows little about the stock market, 350 points sounds like a lot, so it gets views, especially when it's supposedly connected to another event that "caused" it.
May drop a bit more Monday. Big 3 autos are a small segment of S&P now. Tesla may face retaliation. NORAD fees is the nuclear option. "declaration of war" official statement, and US companies standing by their Canadian supply chain is the key "unknown", but either way means Canada is a friend, that undermines Trump, or enemy that undermines US economy/S&P.