US stocks shook off early gloomy expectations of Donald Trump's imminent tariff announcement and ended mixed, with the S&P 500 back in positive territory from a six-month low.
The US president described Wednesday (02.04) as "Liberation Day" and vowed to impose further sweeping levies against his trading partners without providing further details of his plans.
Amid the uncertainty, volatility spiked in early trading, with the CBOE volatility index, known as Wall Street's "fear gauge," jumping more than 10%, then falling sharply as the day progressed.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average reversed its earlier decline and ended up 1.0% at 42,001.76 points, as did the broader S&P 500 Index, which rose 0.6% to 5,611.85 points.
The technology-oriented Nasdaq Composite Index fell 0.1% to 17,299.29 points.
Despite the recovery, the S&P posted its worst quarter since 2022.
"I think [traders] took advantage of an oversold situation," CFRA's Sam Stovall told AFP.
"They still have one more day in which they can play," before Trump's big announcement on tariffs, Stovall added.
Among individual stocks, Moderna fell 8.9 percent following the departure of a top U.S. Food and Drug Administration official who disagrees with Trump's new health secretary, known vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. | BGNES
