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Wall Street staged a dramatic rebound Wednesday after President Donald Trump abruptly hit pause on sweeping tariffs for most countries. The 90-day delay — announced shortly after the duties took effect — whipsawed stocks and rocked major indices.
But a little more than an hour before markets opened Thursday, stocks looked poised to slump again. Futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average were down 537 points, or 1.3%, while S&P 500 futures were off 1.7% and Nasdaq futures were off 2.1%.
After Trump announced the pause on Wednesday, the Nasdaq surged 12.1% — its second-biggest daly gain on record — while the Dow jumped more than 3,000 points for the first time in history, closing up 8%. The S&P 500 rose 9.5%. Some of the market’s most battered names led the charge, with Apple (AAPL+4.00%) stock rising 15%, both Nvidia (NVDA+2.52%) and Intel (INTC-1.85%) jumping more than 18%, and Tesla (TSLA-0.96%) rallying 23%.
Meta (META-0.59%) and Amazon (AMZN+1.90%) also logged double-digit gains, underscoring how sudden, top-down policy reversals don’t just move markets. They redistribute billions of dollars to those positioned — and in fact publicly encouraged — to capitalize.
Here’s what to watch on Thursday.
CarMax earnings: Is the engine still running?
CarMax (KMX+1.95%) reports earnings Thursday morning, with analysts expecting earnings per share of $0.66 on $5.97 billion in revenue — up sharply from $0.32 per share a year ago. As the top U.S. used car seller, CarMax is a key gauge of consumer health. Used car sales straddle interest rates, credit access, and household budgets, making them a prime barometer of macro pressure.
Softening demand or tighter lending could flag middle-class strain, especially among subprime buyers. And with CarMax offering in-house financing, any signs of rising delinquencies or tightened credit standards may echo the recessionary signals analysts fear could appear in bank earnings Friday.
BlackRock and Morgan Stanley set to open bank earnings Friday
The first major financial firms to report, BlackRock (BLK+3.01%) and Morgan Stanley (MS+2.05%), will kick off bank earnings season Friday morning. BlackRock’s results are expected to shed light on investor risk appetite and ETF flow trends in a choppy bond market. That’s because few institutions offer a clearer window into where money is actually moving.
BlackRock reflects bond market demand primarily through its fixed income fund flows. As the world’s largest asset manager, with over $10 trillion AUM, it runs a massive range of ETFs and mutual funds that track everything from short-term Treasuries to junk bonds. If investors are running from risk — or chasing yield — BlackRock’s books may demonstrate the shift.
Morgan Stanley, meanwhile, offers a read on the health of deal-making and IPO activity — both of which have slowed amid rising rates and global uncertainty. Together, the two are likely to set the tone for how Wall Street is navigating 2025’s volatile whiplash economy.