BOSTON — According to the Associated Press, The S&P 500 tumbled 5.7%, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 2,054 points as Wall Street’s worst crisis since the COVID crash deepens. The Nasdaq composite was down 5.5%, with a little more than an hour remaining in trading, after China matched President Donald Trump’s big raise in tariffs in an escalating trade war.
Not even a better-than-expected report on the U.S. job market, which is usually the economic highlight of each month, was enough to stop the slide.
In Boston, commuters kept their phones close and their portfolios closer heading into the weekend.
“It sucks,” said commuter Matthew Conway looking at his stock values. “It’s not healthy. I got to stop looking at it.”
Weymouth resident Randall Cook was planning on retiring in a few years, but tells Boston 25 that might’ve changed this week.
He explained, “Now I’m wondering, ‘So, how much longer do I have to work’... It’s just bad and I don’t know if it’ll get any better.”
Victor Matheson, an economics professor at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, has been monitoring the dip closely.
“US stock markets have shed over $5 trillion of value in just the last 48 hours,” he said Friday. “Every economic measure of uncertainty has hit essentially records levels -- levels we didn’t even see in the pandemic, levels we didn’t see during the great recession, levels we didn’t see after 9/11.”
Matheson continued, “This one is entirely self-inflicted... We can’t count on government coming to rescue us since they’re the ones who put us in that position in the first place.”
He told Boston 25 Friday the next week remains unseen due to constantly changing tariff policies – but he urges everyone with money invested in the market to keep a close eye on it.
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