Finance

The S&P 500 has wobbled in 2025. The U.S. stock index briefly touched correction territory last week.
Investors can take advantage of such selloffs by buying stocks at a discount, financial experts say.
Investors should be mindful of their overall stock/bond allocations when doing so.

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City. 
Spencer Platt | Getty Images

Stock market corrections are common

First, there is some consolation for investors. Though they may feel painful, stock market corrections are fairly common.
There have been 27 market corrections since November 1974, including last week’s market move, according to Mark Riepe, head of the Schwab Center for Financial Research. That amounts to roughly one every two years or so, on average.
Most of them haven’t cascaded into something more sinister. Just six of those corrections became “bear markets” (in 1980, 1987, 2000, 2007, 2020 and 2022), according to Riepe. A bear market is a downturn of 20% or more.

Pullbacks can be ‘an incredible opportunity’

Investors often engage in catastrophic thinking when there’s a market pullback, believing the market may never recover and that they’ll lose all their hard-earned money, said Brad Klontz, a certified financial planner and behavioral finance expert.
In reality, pullbacks are a less-risky time to invest, relative to when stocks are hitting all-time highs and feel more “exciting,” said Klontz, managing principal of YMW Advisors in Boulder, Colorado, and a member of CNBC’s Advisor Council.

Investors are also buying stocks at a discount, known as “buying the dip.”
“It’s an incredible opportunity for you to be putting more money in,” Klontz said.
This is especially the case for young investors, who have decades for stock prices to recover and grow, Klontz said.  
Investors in workplace plans like 401(k) plans unconsciously take advantage of stock selloffs via dollar-cost averaging. A piece of their paycheck goes into the market every pay cycle, regardless of what’s happening in the market, Klontz said.

Be mindful of stock/bond allocations

However, investors should think carefully before going on a stock-buying spree, said Christine Benz, director of personal finance and retirement planning for Morningstar.
They should generally avoid diverging from their stock/bond allocations calibrated in a well-laid financial plan, she said.  
Of course, certain investors with cash on the sidelines may be able to take advantage of selloffs by investing in undervalued stocks, Benz said. U.S. large-cap stocks, for example, were selling at a roughly 5% discount relative to their fair market value as of Wednesday, according to Morningstar.
“I would let the asset-allocation target lead the way in determining whether that’s an appropriate strategy,” Benz said. More

UBS analysts on Wednesday became the latest to raise expectations that China’s struggling real estate market is close to stabilizing.
Existing home sales in five major Chinese cities have climbed by more than 30% from a year ago on a weekly basis as of Wednesday, according to a CNBC analysis of data accessed via Wind Information.

Urban buildings in Huai’an city, Jiangsu province, China, on March 18, 2025.
Cfoto | Future Publishing | Getty Images

BEIJING — UBS analysts on Wednesday became the latest to raise expectations that China’s struggling real estate market is close to stabilizing.
“After four or five years of a downward cycle, we have begun to see some relatively positive signals,” John Lam, head of Asia-Pacific property and Greater China property research at UBS Investment Bank, told reporters Wednesday. That’s according to a CNBC translation of his Mandarin-language remarks.

“Of course these signals aren’t nationwide, and may be local,” Lam said. “But compared to the past, it should be more positive.”
One indicator is improving sales in China’s largest cities.
Existing home sales in five major Chinese cities have climbed by more than 30% from a year ago on a weekly basis as of Wednesday, according to CNBC analysis of data accessed via Wind Information. The category is typically called “secondary home sales” in China, in contrast to the primary market, which has typically consisted of newly built apartment homes.
UBS now predicts China’s home prices can stabilize in early 2026, earlier than the mid-2026 timeframe previously forecast. They expect secondary transactions could reach half of the total by 2026.

UBS looked at four factors — low inventory, a rising premium on land prices, rising secondary sales and increasing rental prices — that had indicated a property market inflection point between 2014 and 2015. As of February 2025, only rental prices had yet to see an improvement, the firm said.

Chinese policymakers in September called for a “halt” in the decline of the property sector, which accounts for the majority of household wealth and just a few years earlier contributed to more than a quarter of the economy. Major developers such as Evergrande have defaulted on their debt, while property sales have nearly halved since 2021 to around 9.7 trillion yuan ($1.34 trillion) last year, according to S&P Global Ratings.
China’s property market began its recent decline in late 2020 after Beijing started cracking down on developers’ high reliance on debt for growth. Despite a flurry of central and local government measures in the last year and a half, the real estate slump has persisted.
But after more forceful stimulus was announced late last year, analysts started to predict a bottom could come as soon as later this year.
Back in January, S&P Global Ratings reiterated its view that China’s real estate market would stabilize toward the second half of 2025. The analysts expected “surging secondary sales” were a leading indicator on primary sales.
Then, in late February, Macquarie’s Chief China Economist Larry Hu pointed to three “positive” signals that could support a bottom in home prices this year. He noted that in addition to the policy push, unsold housing inventory levels have fallen to the lowest since 2011 and a narrowing gap between mortgage rates and rental yields could encourage homebuyers to buy rather than rent.
But he said in an email this week that what China’s housing market still needs is financial support channeled through the central bank.
HSBC’s Head of Asia Real Estate Michelle Kwok in February said there are “10 signs” the Chinese real estate market has bottomed. The list included recovery in new home sales, home prices and foreign investment participation.
In addition to state-owned enterprises, “foreign capital has started to invest in the property market,” the report said, noting “two Singaporean developers/investment funds acquired land sites in Shanghai on 20 February.”
Foreign investors are also looking for alternative ways to enter China’s property market after Beijing announced a push for affordable rental housing.
Invesco in late February announced its real estate investment arm formed a joint venture with Ziroom, a Chinese company known locally for its standardized, modern-style apartment rentals.
The joint venture, called Izara Holdings, plans to initially invest 1.2 billion yuan (about $160 million) in a 1,500-room rental housing development near one of the sites for Beijing’s Winter Olympics, with a targeted opening of 2027.
The units will likely be available for rent around 5,000 yuan a month, Calvin Chou, head of Asia-Pacific, Invesco Real Estate, said in an interview. He said developers’ financial difficulties have created a market gap, and he expects the joint venture to invest in at least one or two more projects in China this year.
Ziroom’s database allows the company to quickly assess regional factors for choosing new developments, Ziroom Asset Management CEO Meng Yue said in a statement, adding the venture plans to eventually expand overseas.

Not out of the woods

However, data still reflects a struggling property market. Real estate investment still fell by nearly 10% in the first two months of the year, according to a raft of official economic figures released Monday.
“The property sector is especially concerning as key data are in the negative territory across the board, with new home starts growth worsening to -29.6% in January-February from -25.5% in Q4 2024,” Nomura’s Chief China Economist Ting Lu said in a report Monday.
“It’s long been our view that without a real stabilization of the property sector there will be no real recovery of the Chinese economy,” he said.
Improved secondary sales also don’t directly benefit developers, whose revenue previously came from primary sales. S&P Global Ratings this month put Vanke on credit watch, and downgraded its rating on Longfor. Both developers were among the largest in the market.
“Generally China’s [recent] policy efforts have been quite extensive,” Sky Kwah, head of investment advisory at Raffles Family Office, said in an interview earlier this month.
“The key at this point in time is execution. The sector recovery relies on consumer confidence,” he said, adding that “you do not reverse confidence overnight. Confidence has to be earned.” More

Jeffrey Gundlach speaking at the 2019 SOHN Conference in New York on May 5, 2019.
Adam Jeffery | CNBC

DoubleLine Capital CEO Jeffrey Gundlach said Thursday there could be another painful period of volatility on the horizon as the fixed income guru sees heighted risk of a recession.
“I believe that investors should have already upgraded their portfolios … I think that we’re going to have another bout of risk,” Gundlach said on CNBC’s “Closing Bell.”

Gundlach, whose firm managed about $95 billion at the end of 2024, said DoubleLine has lowered the amount of borrowed funds to amplify positions in its leveraged funds to the lowest point in the company’s 16-year history.
Volatility recently spiked after President Donald Trump’s aggressive tariffs on leading trading partners triggered fears of an economic slowdown, spurring a monthlong pullback in the S&P 500 that tipped the benchmark into a 10% correction last week. The index is now about 8% below its all-time high reached in February.
The widely followed investor now sees a 50% to 60% chance of a recession in coming quarters.
“I do think the chance of recession is higher than most people believe. I actually think it’s higher than 50% coming in the next few quarters,” Gundlach said.
His comments came after the Federal Reserve downgraded its outlook for economic growth and hiked its inflation outlook Wednesday, raising fears of stagflation. The Fed still expects to make two rate cuts for the remainder of 2025, even though it said the inflation outlook has worsened.

Gundlach is recommending U.S. investors move away from American securities and find opportunities in Europe and emerging markets.
“It’s probably time to pull the trigger for real on dollar-based investors diversifying away from simply United States investing. And I think that’s going to be a long-term trend,” he said. More

Tariffs are expected to raise the U.S. inflation rate in 2025, Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell said Wednesday.
U.S. businesses pass tariff costs on to consumers, both directly and indirectly, economists said.
An increase in the inflation rate may be relatively short-lived, if tariffs amount to a one-time price increase, economists said.

Fang Dongxu/VCG via Getty Images

There was an oft-repeated message in Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell’s press conference on Wednesday: Tariffs will raise consumer prices.
The U.S. central bank raised its inflation forecast for 2025, as have many economists, due to the expected impact of a trade war initiated by the Trump administration.

“A good part of it is coming from tariffs,” Powell said of the Fed’s elevated inflation estimate.
“I do think with the arrival of the tariff inflation, further progress may be delayed,” Powell said.
His statement comes at a time when pandemic-era inflation has gradually declined but hasn’t yet been fully tamed to the Fed’s goal of a 2% annual inflation rate.
“Tariffs are simply inflationary, despite what [President] Donald Trump may tell people,” said Bradley Saunders, a North America economist at Capital Economics.

Why tariffs raise consumer prices

Tariffs are a tax on imports. U.S.-based importers — say, clothing retailers or supermarkets — pay the tax so goods can clear customs and enter the country.

Tariffs raise prices for consumers in a few ways, economists said.
For one, tariffs add costs for U.S. businesses, which may charge higher prices at the store rather than take a hit on profits, Saunders said.
Tariffs are a protectionist economic policy, meaning they seek to protect U.S. businesses from international competition by making foreign products more expensive.
Consumers may switch to a U.S. product rather than pay a higher price for the foreign counterpart. However, that logic may not pan out. The U.S. substitute was likely more expensive than the foreign product to start, Saunders said — otherwise, why wouldn’t consumers buy the U.S.-produced good to begin with?
So tariffs may still leave the consumer paying more, whichever products they choose to buy, he said.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell delivers remarks at a news conference following a Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting at the Federal Reserve on March 19, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Kevin Dietsch | Getty Images

Tariffs on Canada, China and Mexico, for example, would cost the typical U.S. household about $1,200 a year, according to a February analysis by economists at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. (This analysis modeled the direct costs of a 25% tariff on Canada and Mexico, and 10% additional tariff on China.)
The president’s economic agenda, including tariffs, will create new jobs, White House spokesperson Kush Desai said in response to a request for comment from CNBC about the inflationary impact of tariffs.

Indirect tariff impact

Trump has imposed a slew of tariffs since taking office in January.
The Trump administration raised levies on imports from China and on many products from Canada and Mexico — the three biggest trade partners of the U.S. It put 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum and plans to put reciprocal tariffs on all U.S. trade partners in April. The White House also signaled duties on copper and lumber are forthcoming.
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During his first term, President Trump imposed tariffs on about $380 billion of imports, in 2018 and 2019, according to the Tax Foundation. The Biden administration kept most of them intact.
This time around, the tariffs are much broader. They currently impact more than $1 trillion, the Tax Foundation said. The sum will increase to $1.4 trillion if temporary exemptions for some Canadian and Mexican products lapse in early April, it said.
It was largely a “U.S.-China” trade war during Trump’s first term, Saunders said. “Now it’s a “U.S.-everyone trade war,” he said.
There are indirect consumer impacts from tariffs, too, economists said.
To that point, many U.S. companies use products subject to tariffs to manufacture their goods.

Take steel, for example: Automakers, construction firms, farm-equipment manufacturers and many other businesses use steel as a production input.
Tariffs may raise auto prices by $4,000 to as much as $12,500, depending on different factors like vehicle type, according to an estimate by consulting firm Anderson Economic Group.
Builders estimate that recent tariffs will add $9,200 to the cost of a typical home, according to the National Association of Home Builders.
Economic studies suggest that, while tariffs may create jobs in certain protected U.S. industries, they ultimately cost U.S. jobs on a net basis, after accounting for retaliation and higher production costs for other industries.
“By trying to protect certain industries, you can actually make other industries more vulnerable,” Lydia Cox, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies international trade, said during a recent webinar.

Short-term ‘pain’?

Trump has said the administration’s tariff policy may cause short-term “pain” for Americans.
Economists stress that there’s ample uncertainty, and that a bump in inflation may be temporary rather than something that raises prices consistently over the long term.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent alluded to this outcome during a recent CNBC interview.
“Tariffs are a one-time price adjustment,” Bessent said. He also the Trump administration was “not getting much credit” for falling costs of oil and mortgages rates.

The Federal Reserve raised its 2025 inflation forecast by 0.3 percentage points to 2.8% in its summary of economic projections issued Wednesday, up from its 2.5% estimate in December. (This projection is for the “core” Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index. PCE is the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, and core prices strip out the volatile food and energy categories.)
Similarly, Goldman Sachs Research expects core PCE to “reaccelerate” to 3% in 2025, up about half a percentage point from its prior forecast.
“It’s really hard to know how this is going to work out,” Fed chair Powell said. More

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The rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee kept its key borrowing rate targeted in a range between 4.25%-4.5%, where it has been since December.
The FOMC downgraded its collective outlook for economic growth and gave a bump higher to its inflation projection.
Officials now see the economy accelerating at just a 1.7% pace this year, down 0.4 percentage point from the last projection in December.
In addition to the rate decision, the Fed announced a further scaling back of its “quantitative tightening” program in which it is slowly reducing the bonds it holds on its balance sheet.

WASHINGTON – The Federal Reserve in a closely watched decision Wednesday held the line on benchmark interest rates though still indicated that reductions are likely later in the year.
Faced with pressing concerns over the impact tariffs will have on a slowing economy, the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee kept its key borrowing rate targeted in a range between 4.25%-4.5%, where it has been since December. Markets had been pricing in virtually zero chance of a move at this week’s two-day policy meeting.

Along with the decision, officials updated their rate and economic projections for this year and through 2027 and altered the pace at which they are reducing bond holdings.

Despite the uncertain impact of President Donald Trump’s tariffs as well as an ambitious fiscal policy of tax breaks and deregulation, officials said they still see another half percentage point of rate cuts through 2025. The Fed prefers to move in quarter percentage point increments, so that would mean two reductions this year.
Investors took encouragement that further cuts could be ahead, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average rising more than 400 points following the decision. However, in a news conference, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said the central bank would be comfortable keeping interest rates elevated if conditions warranted it.
“If the economy remains strong, and inflation does not continue to move sustainably toward 2%, we can maintain policy restraint for longer,” he said. “If the labor market were to weaken unexpectedly, or inflation were to fall more quickly than anticipated, we can ease policy accordingly.”

Uncertainty has increased

In its post-meeting statement, the FOMC noted an elevated level of ambiguity surrounding the current climate.

“Uncertainty around the economic outlook has increased,” the document stated. “The Committee is attentive to the risks to both sides of its dual mandate.”
The Fed is charged with the twin goals of maintaining full employment and low prices.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell delivers remarks at a news conference following a Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting at the Federal Reserve on March 19, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Kevin Dietsch | Getty Images

At the news conference, Powell noted that there had been a “moderation in consumer spending” and it anticipates that tariffs could put upward pressure on prices. These trends may have contributed to the committee’s more cautious economic outlook.
The group downgraded its collective outlook for economic growth and gave a bump higher to its inflation projection. Officials now see the economy accelerating at just a 1.7% pace this year, down 0.4 percentage point from the last projection in December. On inflation, core prices are expected to grow at a 2.8% annual pace, up 0.3 percentage point from the previous estimate.
According to the “dot plot” of officials’ rate expectations, the view is turning somewhat more hawkish on rates from December. At the previous meeting, just one participant saw no rate changes in 2025, compared with four now.
The grid showed rate expectations unchanged over December for future years, with the equivalent of two cuts expected in 2026 and one more in 2027 before the fed funds rate settles in at a longer-run level around 3%.

Scaling back ‘quantitative tightening’

In addition to the rate decision, the Fed announced a further scaling back of its “quantitative tightening” program in which it is slowly reducing the bonds it holds on its balance sheet.
The central bank now will allow just $5 billion in maturing proceeds from Treasurys to roll off each month, down from $25 billion. However, it left a $35 billion cap on mortgage-backed securities unchanged, a level it has rarely hit since starting the process.
Fed Governor Christopher Waller was the lone dissenting vote for the Fed’s move. However, the statement noted that Waller favored holding rates steady but wanted to see the QT program go on as before.
“The Fed indirectly cut rates today by taking action to reduce the pace of runoff of its Treasury holdings,” Jamie Cox, managing partner for Harris Financial Group, said. “The Fed has multiple things to consider in the balance of risks, and this move was one of the easiest choices. This paves the way for the Fed to eliminate runoff by summer, and, with any luck, inflation data will be in place where reducing the Federal Funds rate will be the obvious choice.”
The Fed’s actions follow a hectic beginning to Trump’s second term in office. The Republican has rattled financial markets with tariffs implemented thus far on steel, aluminum and an assortment of other goods against U.S. global trading partners.
In addition, the administration is threatening another round of even more aggressive duties following a review that is scheduled for release April 2.
An uncertain air over what is to come has dimmed the confidence of consumers, who in recent surveys have jacked up inflation expectations because of the tariffs. Retail spending increased in February, albeit less than expected though underlying indicators showed that consumers are still weathering the stormy political climate.
Stocks have been fragile since Trump assumed office, with major averages dipping in and out of correction territory as administration officials cautioned about an economic reset away from government-fueled stimulus and toward a more private sector-oriented approach.
Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan earlier Wednesday countered much of the gloomy talk recently around Wall Street. The head of the second-largest U.S. bank by assets said card data shows spending is continuing at a solid pace, with BofA’s economists expecting the economy to grow around 2% this year.
However, some cracks have been showing in the labor market. Nonfarm payrolls grew at a slower-than-expected pace in February and a broad measure of unemployment that includes discouraged and underemployed workers jumped a half percentage point during the month to its highest level since October 2021.
“Today’s Fed moves echo the kind of uncertainty Wall Street is feeling,” said David Russell, global head of market strategy at TradeStation. “Their expectations are a little stagflationary because GDP estimates came down as inflation inched higher, but none of it is very decisive.”
—CNBC’s Sarah Min contributed to this report.

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Any time share prices are slumping, it is worth looking at a chart of America’s S&P 500 index that goes back to 1987. That year on October 19th, or “Black Monday”, it plummeted by 20% in a single day—a crash not equalled before or since. The shock was so great that regulators subsequently devised “circuit breakers”, which automatically halt trading after a big enough drop, to prevent a repetition. Pull up a chart stretching from then to today, however, and Black Monday is barely visible, dwarfed by the scale of the subsequent returns. For long-term investors, what felt like an earth-shaking event at the time turned out to be little more than a blip. More

U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell testifies before a House Financial Services Committee hearing on “The Semiannual Monetary Policy Report to the Congress,” on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 12, 2025.
Nathan Howard | Reuters

Federal Reserve officials slashed their economic outlook in the latest projections released Wednesday, seeing the U.S. economy growing at a pace lower than 2%.
The rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee downgraded its collective outlook for economic growth to 1.7%, down from the last projection of 2.1% in December. In the meantime, officials hiked their inflation outlook, seeing core prices growing at a 2.8% annual pace, up from the previous estimate of 2.5%. The moves suggested the central bank sees the risk of a stagflation scenario, where inflation rises as economic growth slows.

In a statement, the FOMC noted the “uncertainty around the economic outlook has increased,” adding that the Fed is “attentive to the risks to both sides of its dual mandate.”
Fears of an economic slowdown and inflation reacceleration have increased significantly as President Donald Trump’s aggressive tariffs on key U.S. trading partners are expected to raise prices of goods and services and dent consumer spending.
“Inflation has started to move up now. We think partly in response to tariffs and there may be a delay in further progress over the course of this year,” Fed Chair Jerome Powell said at a news conference. “Overall, it’s a solid picture. The survey data both household and businesses show significant large rising uncertainty and significant concerns about downside risks.”
For now, the Fed still expects to make two rate cuts for the remainder of 2025, according to the median projection, even as the inflation outlook was raised.
The so-called dot plot indicated that 19 FOMC members, both voters and nonvoters, see the benchmark fed funds rate at 3.9% by the end of this year, equivalent to a target range of 3.75% to 4%. The central bank kept its key interest rate unchanged in a range between 4.25%-4.5% on Wednesday.

Still, their view has leaned more hawkish in their rate projection, with four members seeing no rate changes in 2025. At the January meeting, just one official foresaw no changes in interest rates this year.
Here are the Fed’s latest targets:

Arrows pointing outwards

— CNBC’s Jeff Cox contributed reporting.

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