U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a ceremony to posthumously award the Medal of Freedom to Charlie Kirk, in the Rose Garden patio at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., Oct. 14, 2025.
U.S. stocks had a rocky day of trading, swinging from highs and lows like the quality of Game of Thrones across its eight seasons.
At its lowest during the session, the S&P 500 fell as much as 1.5%, but picked up and traded positive for most of the day after U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer gave an indication that China's next trade move could influence the implementation of President Donald Trump's tariffs.
The optimism in markets fizzled, however, when Trump said he was considering "terminating business with China having to do with Cooking Oil" and other forms of "retribution" because the country has stopped buying U.S. soybeans since May. Investors seemed to take that threat seriously, sending the S&P 500 down 0.2% for the day.
Developments elsewhere, however, were more positive. U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell suggested that the central bank might stop tightening monetary policy with regard to its bond holdings. Furthermore, big banks — bellwethers for economic activity — such as JPMorgan Chase , Citi and Goldman Sachs , beat earnings expectations, suggesting that fundamentals are still sound.
And while Oracle's turn to AMD's artificial intelligence chips — hence diversifying from Nvidia graphics processing units — might not be pleasant news for Jensen Huang, spreading out concentration risk could be a positive outcome for investors banking on AI to continue the market rally.
The question, then, is whether Trump will raze the AI-supported market with his tariffs — or if the Magnificent Seven kingdom will stand.