The market on Friday was able to turn a very weak start into a late rally to actually end slightly positive for the day, and much of the volatile action had to do with the quarterly options expiration that occurred on the third Friday of March, and this activity will take place three other times this year with no guarantee that the results will be the same.

After starting out sharply lower and then making strong intraday rallies off of their lows, the market faded out once again in the afternoon, reminding investors that potential big, unsettling policy changes are underway because of the President’s actions along with more signals suggesting the U.S. economy remains okay for now.

After an awful day on Tuesday, the market started out higher and was up by 27 S&P points just before the Fed interest rate announcement, from which it got to an astounding gain of 90 before cooling off to end with a 60 point advance to 5675 as it was led for a change by the large technology stocks and the financials.

Would you believe it, that the market had the nerve to rally for the second straight day, which is the first such occurrence in more than a month, but unfortunately the S&P and Nasdaq are still having their worst month since September 2023.

Well, well, well – will miracles never end, as U.S. stocks rallied to their best day in months on Friday as the current roller coaster suddenly shot back upward, but that still was not enough to keep the U.S. market from a fourth straight losing week, its longest such streak since August.

The market fell further Tuesday following the President’s latest escalation of the trade war, briefly pulling the S&P 10% below its record set last month. And like it’s been for most of the past few weeks, the market’s slide on Tuesday was erratic and dizzying.

After last week’s miserable showing, the market basically collapsed yesterday, as things cut deeper as to how much pain the President will let the economy endure through tariffs and other policies in order to get what he wants.

After the supposed “death cross” around mid-day where the S&P falls below the 200 day moving average (around 5700) for the 50-day price, which is supposedly a near-term bearish signal. But from an intraday low of 5666 it made a very strong comeback to end with a closing gain of 31 to finish at 5770, which would be a nice signal but unfortunately these one-day gains have come in the context of a very negative market recently as the market has lost $3 trillion since the inauguration of the current President. It is now more than 6% below its all-time high set last month.

After a relief rally the day before, the market got blasted downward once again, and going into today’s always important monthly jobs report, this week has become the worst one of the year for equities so far.

Hopefully the administration will perhaps learn that the heavy imposition of tariffs is not something that the stock market wants, because it has suffered large declines when the President is aggressive about it and strong gains, like yesterday, when the government eases back on the pressure.

In one of the more bizarre sessions in what has been a series of them, the market got socked badly on the downside with another historic last hour collapse after some of the indices had the nerve to actually go positive.

In one of the worst collapses from a higher start that we have seen this difficult time, the market once again turned a briefly higher opening into a historic type of crash once again as the market continued to wipe out more of their gains since the current President’s election in November as this time things collapsed after he said that his tariffs announced earlier on Canada and Mexico would take effect within hours.

In one of the most surprising upside reversals seen in a while, the market turned a nice morning gain into what looked like another sickening downside reversal just as the not friendly meeting between the U.S. and Ukrainian presidents got underway, things then made one of the fantastic afternoon upside moves higher than what we have seen in a while.

In a disappointing day that managed to finally end the four-day losing streaks for the S&P and Nasdaq with the Dow lower for a change, things were not able to hold strong morning sessions and just about finished nominally higher for the first two items.

In what turned out to be a weak session after a strong start which could not hold, the Dow was the only index that managed to eke out a very nominal gain while the others ended lower.

In a pattern that has repeated itself for the past few days, the major indices turned sharp intraday declines into late rallies to get positive, and bring on new record highs in the S&P and this situation repeated itself yesterday as well.

In a really peculiar session, instead of starting out strongly higher as the various stock index futures were indicating, things sold off right at the opening, then went sharply lower in mid-afternoon and then rose right on the close to end at a record high in the S&P and close to one in the Dow and Nasdaq.

The market ended the week on Friday with the S&P trying to reach a new high but it fell back nominally at the close.

Despite another inflation report that came in a little higher than expected and all kinds of news about tariffs, the market once again turned its back on the potentially negative news and underwent a tremendous upside rally yesterday which took it close to record highs.

If one watched the pre-market showings yesterday (courtesy of Newbridge Securities), right before their 8:30am release, they were nominally higher.