Finance

The mood music on Wall Street is downbeat, as America’s government throttles trade and hints at recession. Consumers seem poised to trim spending. Yet one corner of the entertainment industry is partying on. Live Nation, a concert promoter, has said it expects the live-music industry to break records in 2025. Its Ticketmaster app saw 70% more traffic this February than last, reckons Sensor Tower, a data firm. More

The mood music on Wall Street is downbeat, as America’s government throttles trade and consumers seem poised to trim spending. Yet one corner of the entertainment industry is partying on regardless. Live Nation, a concert promoter, has said it expects the live-music industry to break records in 2025. Its Ticketmaster app had 70% more traffic this February than last, reckons Sensor Tower, a data firm. More

Investors may want to get back to the basics when it comes to navigating the stock market volatility.
According to F/m Investments CEO Alex Morris, they should consider increasing their exposure to bonds.

“Particularly on the short end of the curve … there’s a lot of safe haven to be had there,” Morris said on CNBC’s “ETF Edge” this week. “If you look at where the equity market is going, you didn’t like the wipeout of a couple of weeks ago — there’s some more banana skins ahead of us.”
His comments came from the site of Miami’s Future Proof conference, where financial advisors and wealth management executives traded ideas and discussed technology, including using generative artificial intelligence.
Morris’ firm provides investors with access to “innovative” strategies, which includes mitigating risks, according to the F/m Investments website.
Morris, who is also the firm’s chief investment officer, sees the economic backdrop and tariff risks as another reason to buy bonds.
“If [DC] policy stays where it is, the short end of the curve is going to be a great place to be,” Morris added.

TCW’s managing director Jeffrey Katz, who also attended the conference, sees benefits in fixed income right now, too. “Bonds are acting as they should in the context of a 60/40 portfolio,” he told “ETF Edge.”
Katz’s firm is behind the TCW Flexible Income ETF, which has been around since November 2018.

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TCW Flexible Income ETF Performance

As of Feb. 28, FactSet shows the exchange-traded fund’s top holdings included U.S. Treasury notes yielding above 4%. It is also rated four stars by Morningstar.
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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

What are the Trumpiest firms? One way to answer the question is by looking at companies in the president’s orbit, such as Tesla, owned by Elon Musk, his billionaire adviser, or the eponymous Trump Media & Technology Group. Another way is to look at firms that saw their prices surge the day after Donald Trump’s election victory, when the biggest gainers included Palantir, a defence contractor; Apollo Global Management and Capital One, two financial giants; and yes, Tesla. More