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With a week of heavyweight data and earnings ahead, Wall Street opted to conserve energy on Monday, leaving stocks unchanged. They dipped midday, then hit the snooze button to snore some z’s, as in zeros.

Level Change 4/28/25 (%)
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
+0.3 Dow
-0.1 Nasdaq
-0.0 Nasdaq 100
+0.1 S&P 500
+0.4 S&P 400
+0.4 S&P 600

Headlines made much of the market clawing back half its losses since February. Hedge funds treated the bounce as a selling opportunity; dutiful, dip-buying retail investors as a clearance sale.

Trade remained the headline act over the weekend, but yesterday delivered more reruns than revelations. Warnings of a supply chain reckoning continue gathering volume, even as officials issued a blend of mixed messages and strategic vagueness.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent contributed little more than a shrug in a suit, saying the next move is up to China, which barely looked up from its rare-earth horde. We’ve made our move.

On the earnings front, most companies emphasize macro uncertainty and the heroic lengths they’re going to in order to dodge tariffs.

Nvidia (NVDA -2.1%) stumbled after The Wall Street Journal reported Huawei is prepping a homegrown AI chip. The Ascend 910D is still a science project for now—several technical hurdles stand between it and reality—but the prospect of a new competitor in the premium chip market was enough to give investors pause.

Superpower rivalry in semiconductors is not just alive, it’s stretching, yawning, and asking what’s for breakfast. Washington’s export bans were supposed to have slammed the door; instead, Huawei is jiggling the handle. Nvidia, longstanding king of the AI chip castle, now faces the stirrings of credible competition. If Huawei’s efforts bear fruit, it could dent Nvidia’s pricing power, prod a new wave of innovation, and hand Chinese firms a badly needed alternative to Western tech—one Washington can’t take away.

The April Dallas Fed manufacturing survey printed well below consensus, hitting its lowest level since May 2020. Price pressures accelerated, while both expectations indexes deteriorated month-over-month. As with every other survey of anyone holding a budget and a newspaper, respondent commentary was dominated by tariffs and uncertainty.

And that was the calm before the spreadsheet storm. Now, all eyes turn to this week’s megatech earnings, consumer confidence updates, and the macro heavyweight on Friday: April employment.

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