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Stocks stormed higher on Thursday, stretching a rebound on decent earnings, a Fed not yet kidnapped by the White House, and the novel idea that fewer tariffs might be better than more. The S&P 500 climbed out of correction territory on the shoulders of bruised but beloved tech names.

And yet, skepticism continues to manifest. This feels less a final-bottom bounce than a smoke break before the next fire drill.

The change in percentages as of Friday, April 24, 2025 are as follows:

• Dow: +1.2
• Nasdaq: +2.7
• Nasdaq 100: +2.8
• S&P 500: +2.0
• S&P 400: +2.1
• S&P 600: +2.0

Investors flagged three big catalysts for three big sessions that lifted the S&P 500 by 6.3% and the Nasdaq by 8.2% since Monday’s crash:

1. Back Away—President Trump assured financial stability hawks that he has no plans of firing Fed Chair Jerome Powell. He might ring him up, might suggest it’s a nice little central bank he’s running and it'd be a shame if anything happened to it, but for now, it looks like there's no firing in the works. It seems investors prefer their Fed un-seized.
2. Trade War Off-Ramp—The wheeler-dealer-in-chief is supposedly hard at it, beating back the bushes of tariff tax he Miracle-Gro’d into a monster. Something’s still growling in there, though. More on that below.
3. Still-Breathing Businesses—Turns out, corporate HQs planned to keep making money, trade war or no. They’ve been working around tariffs, to the tune of 80% beating earnings estimates, per Fundstrat.

Now, about that growling in the bushes. Earlier in the week, Trump hinted negotiations with China were underway and that his 145% tariff wall would soon come down “substantially.” Everything, he said, was “active.” This was news to China.

A foreign ministry spokesperson flatly denied it: “China and the US are not having any consultation or negotiation on tariffs, still less reaching a deal.” A commerce official added that reports of progress were “as groundless as trying to catch the wind.”

Asked by a reporter about the contradiction, Trump replied, “Well, they had a meeting this morning.” When pressed—who’s they?—he said, “I can’t tell you. It doesn’t matter who ‘they’ is. We may reveal it later.”

Ah. Good as gold, that deal. Elsewhere in our corridors of financial illusion, the nominally independent Fed lurches forward, one weary step closer to the next ambush.

Governor Christopher Waller warned of more layoffs and higher unemployment “if the big tariffs... come back on.” A silver lining for investors is that he “would expect more rate cuts, and sooner, once I started seeing some serious deterioration in the labor market.” So, that’s something to root for.

He doubts tariffs will be felt by the economy before July and figures any inflationary impact would be temporary. Transitory, shall we say, with all the confidence that term instills.

Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack said it’s time for patience, data scrutiny, and, by golly, she chirped the hard data “are actually really good.” Sure, the central bank might have a date with a rock and a hard place known as higher inflation and lower employment—but that’s summer’s problem.

Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari is “nervous” about layoffs, and you know how that goes: “[I]f we all get nervous at the same time... it can really bring down the economy, really slow it down.” Aside from that, being nervous is great.

Meanwhile, in mega-tech, the algos are humming and the margins are singing.

Google (GOOG, up +2.4%) beat expectations on Thursday. In Q1, it poured a record $17.2 billion into artificial intelligence. Gemini 2.5, its flagship brain, now tops the industry, according to CEO Sundar Pichai—second opinions not encouraged. Its Waymo robotaxi service logged a five-fold increase in weekly paid rides, likely half of them passengers circling the block, dissociating in the backseat just to get away from it all.

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