April Monthly Market Review

An excerpt from our April Monthly Market Review: April marked a continuation of the market’s frenetic efforts to discount the ultimate impact of tariffs. Survey data continue to point to plunging sentiment and soaring short- and long-term expectations for inflation, but hard data suggest a more nuanced, albeit lagged, view of the state of the global economy. The U.S. equity market closed a volatile April with a slight decline, as a month-end rally erased earlier steep losses. Most non-U.S. equity markets continued to outperform. Chinese equities fell sharply, however, in part reflecting signs of a tariff-induced downturn in industrial production. The underperformance of U.S. stocks relative to their developed market counterparts so far this year amounts to about 16 percentage points, the largest 4-month performance shortfall in 30 years. The U.S. dollar fell against most major currencies in April, while gold continued to climb, briefly topping $3,500 per ounce. Oil prices, however, collapsed, pointing to fears of a global economic slowdown.

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