Heavy Metal Rings Out Loud on Wall Street

On Monday, the main indexes on Wall Street got a heavy metal remix of a 2024 classic: Alongside a rise in Nvidia and other tech stocks, shares of US steel and aluminum companies were in the driver’s seat, bolstered by a fresh round of tariff threats from the Trump administration. If it isn’t clear already, there will likely be more reactive equities swings as long as the new administration keeps up its breakneck pace. But there’s also some evidence that the initial shock and awe has worn off.

Developing Nerves of Steel

Earlier this month, Trump announced his blanket tariffs on Canada and Mexico suddenly on a Saturday — and they’ve now been postponed a month pending negotiations with the countries.

This time around, he announced plans to introduce 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports to the US, in addition to existing duties, on Super Bowl Sunday, giving reporters the news aboard Air Force One as they headed to New Orleans. But unlike the first trading day after the Canada and Mexico tariffs were announced — when equities tumbled before the one-month pause went into effect — markets took the announcement in stride on Monday:

• The very obvious thing happened: American metals producers who stand to benefit from the tariffs had a day for the ages. Nucor rose 5.6%, Steel Dynamics 4.8%, Cleveland-Cliffs a whopping 17%, Century Aluminum 10%, Alcoa 2.3%, and US Steel 4.8%. Trump said last week that U.S. Steel, of note, would now benefit from a heavy investment by Japan’s Nippon Steel rather than be purchased outright for $14.9 billion, as previously proposed.
• Less obvious was the strong day for Nvidia, up 2.9%, and other tech stocks, as well as the S&P 500’s modest reaction to an escalating trade war with a 0.7% increase. “People are getting used to it a little bit already,” Alexis Investment Partners president Jason Browne told Reuters of Trump’s earthquake-level policy pronouncements. 

“The first time we started to hear, ‘Oh my gosh, here come the tariffs,’ we saw some pretty big pullback,” Browne added. “We get the announcement of the steel tariffs today, and you really don’t see much market reaction. There’s this overall sense of ‘Let’s let this play out a little bit’ because it’s happening within the backdrop of a pretty strong economy, pretty good overall earnings and a lot of moving parts.”

About Those Earnings: Fourth-quarter reporting is roughly halfway over on Wall Street, and analysts now expect S&P 500 companies to post year-over-year earnings growth of 14.8%, compared with 10% to start the year, according to LSEG I/B/E/S. According to a FactSet report last month, analysts also happen to expect that exact same figure — 14.8% — in S&P 500 earnings growth for the 2025 calendar year.