Trade Talks Calm Jitters, Job Market Still Strong

Hi, welcome to the Russell Investments market weekend review for the week ending 25th of April 2025. My name is Alex Kusley. I'm the senior investment strategist for Asia Pacific and it's been a pretty uh eventful week and generally markets have been in the positive direction. So S&P 500 as we sit here on Thursday close is up nearly 4%. Uh we've seen yields moving more or less sideways and the US dollar similarly very volatile but moving sideways. If we go to what is driving markets right now so it still is around headlines around trade. So over the week we've had a couple of developments. Firstly if we go back a couple of weeks when the liberation day tariffs were put in place we had said that we thought Asian countries in general exchina would be more likely to kind of make deals quickly. uh we've seen Japan make moves towards that. And then today, Scott Bent noted that uh South Korea has brought their agame in terms of um bringing a deal forward. So that's encouraging news from Japan and from South Korea. Uh we've also had it seems that the tone around China has been moderating a little bit. So through the week we saw again Treasury Secretary Bant noting that the China tariffs were unsustainable and then uh later through the week there was comments from President Trump or or President Trump's um administration that perhaps the tariffs for China would land closer to 50 to 60% rather than 145. So still early days but it seems that at least that the tone is starting to moderate against China. continuation of this thematic where the soft data so the survey data remains very soft. So we've seen um the PMIs, we've seen u the uh the regional Fed surveys, we've also seen University of Michigan consumer sentiment survey all suggesting that there is a lot of um pessimism and and downside in terms of surveys um and survey responses. But the hard data has generally held up quite well and the two things that we are watching quite closely uh from the business side is um jobless claims. So are people are firms starting to lay off people and the jobless claims print today look quite healthy and still suggest there isn't much strain coming through in the labor market and the second one is the Indeed job openings so new job openings that are listed on Indeed which is one of the big job boards in the United States and again that looks pretty good and so we aren't seeing as yet um signs that the you know this lack of confidence and and falling confidence is flowing through to layoff decisions or indeed even um a significant reduction in hiring decisions. So job ads look healthy. So as we sit here today, a lot of uncertainty still around trade. At the margin, those um trade headlines have become a little bit more constructive. Uh and the hard data is holding in there. So you know the uh our general message has been throughout this is to stay invested, stay close to strategic asset allocation and if anything look to take advantage of equity market dislocations which we haven't seen a great deal of even though we saw the selloff and we think that that advice and that message is still very prudent today. So um we'll keep you updated uh through the coming weeks. Uh but yeah, generally it was a bit better of a week for equity markets in general. Thanks for listening and we'll see you soon. Hi, I'm Sophie Antelbe, head of portfolio and business consulting at Russell Investments. If you liked what you just saw and heard, consider subscribing to our YouTube channel or check us out on LinkedIn. Thanks for tuning in.