Stock market today: Wall Street gains ground after shaking off four-week losing streak

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Stock market today: Wall Street gains ground after shaking off four-week losing streak

2025-03-25 04:30 Last Updated At：04:40

Stocks closed broadly higher Monday amid hopes on Wall Street that the Trump administration may take a more targeted approach as it tees up a new round of tariffs on imported goods next week.

The S&P 500 jumped 1.8%. The index was coming off its first winning week after a four-week losing streak.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1.4%, and the Nasdaq composite closed 2.3% higher.

“The market was primed to respond well if the administration pulled back on some of the tariff threats or even provided off ramps for the tensions, and that’s kind of what we’re seeing here,” said Ross Mayfield, investment strategist at Baird.

Despite the gains, the benchmark S&P 500 has lost 1.9% so far this year out of concerns that a trade war could hinder economic growth and increase inflationary pressures.

Wall Street remains focused on how tariffs could eventually impact inflation, consumer spending and economic growth. Stocks have been riding waves of hope and worry as tariffs are announced, then either implemented or pulled. A new round of tariffs scheduled to be implemented on April 2 could also be softened or postponed rather than take effect.

Trump has been somewhat closely guarded about his plans for tariffs, saying Monday that even though he wants to charge “reciprocal” rates — import taxes to match the rates charged by other countries -- that “we might be even nicer than that.”

“The exact breadth and scale of the tariffs remain to be seen, and a cycle of tit-for-tat escalation is also possible in the weeks following the announcement, potentially triggering further bouts of market volatility,” said Ulrike Hoffmann-Burchardi, chief investment officer of global equities at UBS Global Wealth Management.

Gains on Monday were broad, with 84% of stocks within the S&P 500 ending higher. Nearly every sector within the index rose.

Technology stocks helped lead the way. The sector has been the driving force behind much of the broader markets movement, whether up or down. The stocks are among the most valuable on Wall Street and tend to have an outsized impact on the broader market's direction.

Nvidia rose 3.2% and Apple added 1.1%.

Tesla climbed 11.9% for the biggest gain among S&P 500 stocks. The electric vehicle maker is still down about 31% for the year. It has been struggling on worries that customers are turned off by CEO Elon Musk’s leading efforts to slash spending by the U.S. government.

Genetics testing company 23andme lost more than half its value after it announced over the weekend that it had initiated voluntary bankruptcy proceedings.

AZEK Co. jumped 17.3% after the building materials company announced it was being bought by Australia's James Hardie Industries in a cash-and-stock deal valued around $8.75 billion.

It's the second large deal in the sector in less than a week, with QXO Inc. announcing on Thursday that it was buying Beacon Roofing Supply Inc. in a deal worth about $11 billion, including debt.

All told, the S&P 500 rose 100.01 points to 5,767.57. The Dow gained 597.97 points to 42,583,32. The Nasdaq rose 404.54 points to 18,188.59.

In the bond market, Treasury yields rose. The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.34% from 4.25% late Friday.

Markets in Europe mostly closed lower, while indexes in Asia were mixed.

Chinese Premier Li Qiang struck a conciliatory tone during a meeting with business leaders and U.S. Senator Steve Daines, a strong supporter of President Donald Trump, who is the first member of Congress to visit Beijing since Trump took office in January.

Wall Street has several economic updates this week. Business group The Conference Board releases its consumer confidence survey for March on Tuesday. Wall Street expects the survey to show a slight dip in consumer confidence.

On Friday, the U.S. government releases the personal consumption expenditures price index for February. It is a measure of inflation closely watched by the Federal Reserve.

Recent economic reports have shown that the underlying economy remains strong, but that consumers are becoming more worried and cautious. They have also shown that inflation remains stubborn.

Stubborn inflation has prompted more caution from the Fed, which started cutting its benchmark interest rate at the end of 2024. Those cuts came after the central bank raised interest rates in order to cool inflation from a two-decade high.

Several measures of inflation show that interest rates remain just above the Fed's goal of 2%. The U.S. trade war with its key trading partners has threatened to reignite inflation and the Fed is holding off on further cutting interest rates to see how inflation and the broader economy reacts.

Lower interest rates can ease borrowing costs and help give the economy a boost, but they can also push inflation higher.

Jiang Junzhe and Matt Ott contributed to this report.

Homeland Security Secretary visits El Salvador prison where deported Venezuelans are held

2025-03-27 06:17 Last Updated At：06:20

TECOLUCA, El Salvador (AP) — U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Wednesday visited the high-security El Salvador prison where Venezuelans who the Trump administration alleges are gang members have been held since their removal from the United States. The tour that included two crowded cell blocks, the armory and an isolation unit.

Noem's trip to the prison — where inmates are packed into cells and never allowed outside — comes as the Trump administration seeks to show it is deporting people it describes as the “worst of the worst.”

The Trump administration is arguing in federal court that it was justified in sending the Venezuelans to El Salvador, while human rights activists say officials have sent them to a prison rife with human rights abuses.

At the prison, Noem toured an area holding some of the Venezuelans accused of being gang members. In the sweltering building, the men in white t-shirts and shorts stared silently from their cell without making a sound.

When Noem exited the building, the men could be heard shouting an indiscernible chant.

In a post on X Wednesday, Homeland Security indicated it would continue working with El Salvador, saying that Noem was slated to discuss how the U.S. can “increase the number of deportation flights and removals of violent criminals from the U.S." during her visit with President Nayib Bukele.

Since taking office, Noem has frequently been front and center in efforts to highlight the immigration crackdown. She took part in immigration enforcement operations, rode horses with Border Patrol agents and was the face of a television campaign warning people in the country illegally to self-deport.

Noem’s Wednesday visit is part of a three-day trip. She'll also travel to Colombia and Mexico.

The Venezuelans were removed from the U.S. this month after Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 and said the U.S. was being invaded by the Tren de Aragua gang. The Alien Enemies Act gives the president wartime powers and allows noncitizens to be deported without the opportunity to go before an immigration or federal court judge.

In a setback for the administration, an appeals court Wednesday kept in place an order barring the administration from deporting more Venezuelan immigrants to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act.

A central outstanding question about the deportees’ status is when and how they could ever be released from the prison, called the Terrorism Confinement Center, as they are not serving sentences. They no longer appear in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s online detainee locator and have not appeared before a judge in El Salvador.

The Trump administration refers to them as the “worst of the worst” but hasn't identified who was deported or provided evidence that they’re gang members.

Relatives of some of the deportees have categorically denied any gang affiliation. The Venezuelan government and a group called the Families of Immigrants Committee in Venezuela hired a lawyer to help free those held in El Salvador. A lawyer for the firm, which currently represents about 30 Venezuelans, said they aren't gang members and have no criminal records.

The U.S. government has acknowledged that many do not have such records.

Flights were in the air March 15 when a federal judge issued a verbal order temporarily barring the deportations and ordered planes to return to the U.S.

The Trump administration has argued that the judge’s verbal directions did not count, that only his written order needed to be followed and that it couldn’t apply to flights that had already left the U.S.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that about 261 people were deported on the flights, including 137 under the Alien Enemies Act.

Bukele opened the prison in 2023 as he made the Central American country’s stark, harsh prisons a trademark of his fight against crime. The facility has eight sprawling pavilions and can hold up to 40,000 inmates. Each cell can fit 65 to 70 prisoners.

Prisoners can't have visitors. There are no workshops or educational programs.

El Salvador hasn’t had diplomatic relations with Venezuela since 2019, so the Venezuelans imprisoned there do not have consular support from their government.

Video released by El Salvador’s government after the deportees' arrival showed men exiting airplanes onto an airport tarmac lined by officers in riot gear. The men, who had their hands and ankles shackled, struggled to walk as officers pushed their heads down.

They were later shown at the prison kneeling on the ground as their heads were shaved before they changed into the prison’s all-white uniform — knee-length shorts, T-shirt, socks and rubber clogs — and placed in cells.

For three years, El Salvador has been operating under a state of emergency that suspends fundamental rights as Bukele wages an all-out assault on the country's powerful street gangs. During that time, some 84,000 people have been arrested, accused of gang ties and jailed, often without due process.

Bukele offered to hold U.S. deportees in the prison when U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited in February.

At the prison Wednesday, El Salvador Justice Minister Gustavo Villatoro showed Noem a cell holding Salvadorans he said had been there since the prison opened. “No one expects that these people can go back to society and behave,” he said.

Santana reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Marcos Alemán in San Salvador, El Salvador, contributed to this report.