Market Report for Thursday, May 29, 2025
Wall Street faced a whirlwind of news Thursday—illegal tariffs! legal again!—but mostly shrugged, deciding that judicial drama and AI gold rushes cancel each other out, at least until tomorrow’s headline roulette spins again.
Level Change 5/29/25 (%)
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
+0.3 Dow
+0.4 Nasdaq
+0.2 Nasdaq 100
+0.4 S&P 500
+0.3 S&P 400
+0.4 S&P 600
Stocks wandered modestly higher in a session that offered more confusion than conviction.
The day’s main plot twist—President Trump’s signature tariffs declared illegal—was immediately spun into a bureaucratic blur, then promptly paused by a federal appeals court. So yes, tariffs are illegal, but also still legal, and possibly headed to the Supreme Court, where justices can weigh in on whether emergency powers include taxing toasters from Toronto.
The original ruling said Trump had overreached by invoking the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to slap duties on nearly every country. The White House called the ruling “rife with legal error,” appealed, and secured a stay just before the market close. As of now, the tariffs remain in effect, and traders remain unsure what just happened. Call them puzzled, not panicked.
That might be because Nvidia offered something better to focus on.
The AI bellwether (NVDA +3.3%) delivered strong results that didn’t just clear a high bar, they brought their own. Concerns over China export losses were drowned out by surging demand for inference computing and the full-speed launch of its new Blackwell rack system. CEO Jensen Huang declared that “every nation now sees AI as core to the next industrial revolution,” which is probably true, though some are eyeing it more like the next oil, with accompanying turf wars.
Elsewhere on this laid-back Thursday, Fed Chair Powell dropped by the White House for what the Fed described as a neutral, data-driven chat. Trump restated that the Fed should cut rates. Powell nodded politely and restated the importance of “careful, objective, nonpolitical analysis”—code for “you run your show, we’ll run the numbers.”
Goolsbee of the Chicago Fed dangled the idea that avoiding tariffs might clear a path for rate cuts. But FOMC minutes tilted hawkish, with slowdown anxieties top of mind. And don’t lose sight of this: Even if the biggest tariffs vanish, what’s left would still be the steepest since 1969, keeping pressure on growth.
So we’re left where we’ve been: staring at a market balanced between policy purgatory and AI euphoria. Nvidia lit the path forward, but Washington lit a legal fuse. Watch which burns faster.
— Jason Kelly
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