Trump Tariffs Hit the Markets: Wall Street Drops Expected, Bitcoin Falls

14:38

The Novo Nordisk company announced today (Monday) that in a comparative trial it conducted for the product CagriSema, a new shot for weight loss, against the competitor considered to be the most effective on the market, Eli Lilly’s Monjaro (triseptide), Novo’s drug failed to win or even compare to the competitor.

The users of Kagrisma lost an average of 20.2% in weight, not a bad result at all – but those treated with Eli Lilly’s drug lost an average of 23.6%, all this after 84 weeks of treatment. The difference between the results is considered statistically significant.

In response, a share Novo Nordisk goes down, and a stock Eli Lilly rising.

13:56

The investment bank Jefferies is re-examining the software stocks, and refers specifically to companies that provide applications, including for example monday and-Wix Israeliness. At the bank, they download recommendations, cut target prices for some stocks and try to mark the winners in the field.

Monday receives a recommendation downgrade – from “buy” to “hold” – as well as a sharp cut in the target price, from $260 to $80. The new target price is 5.8% higher than the price of the stock on Nasdaq. On Wix, the recommendation remains unchanged, “buy”, but the target price is reduced from $200 to $130 – a premium of no less than 94% on the current price.

Monday is not the only stock to which the bank’s approach has changed, and along with it, the recommendations for Workday, DocuSign and Freshworks shares have also dropped to “hold” and the target prices for the shares have been cut by more than 50% (on Monday this is a target price reduction of 69%). in stock Salesforce The target price drops only 33% to $250, and the recommendation remains “buy”.

10:30

Trading in Europe opened with declines this morning – the Frankfurt Stock Exchange falls by 0.6%, Paris by 0.2%, London unchanged.

08:15

Wall Street futures are down and express a negative start to the trading week.
In the background, President Donald Trump’s announcement of raising his global tariffs to 15% from 10% after the Supreme Court overturned the President’s “reciprocal” tariffs. The new tariffs have increased uncertainty in the market about the outlook for inflation and global growth.

● Israel is satisfied with the cancellation of Trump’s tariffs: “Gives an advantage in negotiations, there is no longer any point in rushing to sign”
● Trump’s horror scenario: Iran’s war-stopping response

As a result, at this time futures on the Dow Jones index are down by about 0.6%, the S&P 500 is down by 0.8% and the Nasdaq is down by about 1%. In Asia, on the other hand, there is a mixed trend this morning – the Hang Seng jumps by about 2.3%, the Kospi rises by about 0.7%, but the Nikkei and the Shanghai index lose their value by about 1.2%.

Bitcoin also falls 5% below $65,000. Bitcoin has been in a sharp decline since its peak in October, when it crossed the $125,000 mark. The world’s largest cryptocurrency is down 26% so far this year and has lost more than 47% since its October peak.

The market is trying to digest and weigh Trump’s new steps. On Friday, the cancellation of the American tariff plan actually sent a wave of optimism to Wall Street: Nasdaq broke off its weekly streak of declines, and the S&P 500 and Dow Jones ended a positive week. But the joy was measured – the increases on Friday were moderate, the market is still not sure that the storm is really behind it, and indeed then came Trump’s announcement about the tariff hike and the uncertainty returned.

Stock indices on Wall Street closed last week in gains, with a moderate positive trend throughout the week that intensified on Friday, after the Supreme Court’s ruling nullifying the Trump administration’s tariffs. In the AI ​​sector, Ethnopic continues to launch new tools – this time it’s a tool that can find and fix security problems in code, which will put pressure on cyber security stocks, which have registered declines.

In weekly summary, the S&P 500 rose 1.1%, the Nasdaq rose 1.5%, snapping a five-week losing streak, and the Dow Jones added 0.3%.

After the Supreme Court ruled on Friday that the tariffs were illegal, Trump announced in response that he would sign a new order imposing a global tariff at a rate of 10% (he managed to update it upwards to 15%).

Matan Shetrit, Phoenix’s Chief Economist, believes that “Given that the tariffs were a central component of the Trump administration’s trade policy, it is likely that the administration will actively work to promote alternative routes to restore some of the tariffs that were canceled. The tariffs narrative will continue to accompany us, whether it is through other sections of the law or through new measures, but in the end it is only a small part of the overall macro picture.”

One of the results of the uncertainty on Wall Street is that investors abandon the hype stocks and move to companies with heavy assets and immunity to technological disruptions, or in other words – back to the “old and stable”.

The Wall Street Journal wrote that investors are looking at “AI immune” companies – traditional industry, energy, food and heavy equipment – areas where it is difficult to imagine how an algorithm or a language model replaces a complex physical activity overnight. Shares of companies as McDonald’s Exxon Mobile or pen are attracting renewed interest, while some of the major technology stocks are struggling to replicate the meteoric rise of the past few years.

Deer shares jumped 42% since the beginning of the year, Caterpillar in 32%.

According to Josh Brown, CEO of Ritholtz Wealth Management who coined the term HALO – short for Heavy Assets, Low Obsolescence (heavy assets, slow obsolescence). This is a response to market cycles. “These are companies that you can’t just type something into a prompt and undermine their activity,” he said, adding that every wave of uncertainty forces investors to “re-price” even the safest basic assumptions. In other words, after years in which the technological dream led the stock market, investors are returning to look for anchors in the real world – manufacturing plants, energy lines and food chains, hoping to find stability in an era of digital revolution.

Over the past month, the S&P 500’s industrials, raw materials, utilities and consumer staples sectors outperformed the overall index, while the information technology sector weakened and the tech giants faltered. As of February 20, the consumer staples sector (XLP ) posted its best start to the year ever and is up 13% YTD, the S&P 500 is up about 1%.

Nvidia signed an extended multi-year agreement with Meta Platforms (Facebook) in which it will provide the social media giant with millions of graphics processors from the new Blackwell and Rubin models for its data centers.

The surprising and no less significant part of the deal is Meta’s decision to deploy for the first time, and on a large scale, servers based on Nvidia’s Grace processors only (without the GPU). The move marks Nvidia’s ambition to penetrate the traditional central processing unit (CPU) market, where the demand for solutions that optimize “Agentic AI” and inferencing applications is increasing.

This expansion of Nvidia is a direct threat to Intel, historically dominant in the field of server processors, and to AMD, which is itself trying to increase its market share at the expense of Intel.

The spotlight on Wall Street will turn to chip giant Nvidia, which is expected to publish its financial reports on Wednesday and shed light on the strength of global demand for AI, possibly reigniting positive sentiment in the technology sector.

In Asia mainly the increases this morning despite the uncertainty surrounding trade policy, after US President Donald Trump announced over the weekend that he intends to raise global tariffs to 15% instead of 10%.

The Hang Seng index in Hong Kong jumps by 2.2%, the South Korean stock market by 0.7%, there is no trading in Tokyo and China.

The positive reaction in the markets reflects the hope of investors that the measures will be more measured than the initial fear, or that they have already been partially priced in. At the same time, some investors estimate that Asian countries, which depend on exports, may benefit from one-off agreements or concessions, which will moderate the initial panic.

However, analysts warn that if the tariff increase is fully implemented, it could damage supply chains, pressure the profitability of exporting companies and trigger volatility in global markets, especially at a time when the global economy is also experiencing geopolitical tensions.