The last two weeks are busy for markets. Volatility increased and many new trading records were hits. Today, we briefly explain what happened and how recently activity and market compared.
Both stock and bond affected by tariff news
Before the Q1 ended, the American market had already started falling. The apprehension about the new tariff affecting American imports, American production and overall economy was starting to weigh on shares.
Then, after the market closure on Wednesday, April 2, President Trump announced a long -awaited “mutual tariff”. These were much more than expected and almost every country was affected, which was surprising the market along with American trades.
A week later, the stock increased after a delay of 90 days of mutual tariff. The NASDAQ Composite Index achieved more than 12%, its second best day.
The stock was not the only thing that was watching external returns. The US 10-year-old Treasury was also sold, which increased the yields below 3.9% to about 4.6%, an increase of about 66 base-points a week. This is something that is not usually in a risk-stop market, experts wonder why Bond buyers were suddenly cooled on the security of the treasury.
Chart 1: In the last two weeks US 10 years rates and news and tricks in NASDAQ-100
Click here to see larger image
Many other markets were also seen dramatically. High yielding bonds saw an increase in its credit and dialects. Crypto property, oil and US-dollars also fell. One of some assets for the Gold rally was.
Places is high, but not on a record
As the market is sold and uncertainty increased, the VIX (inherent instability) index declined.
Since the VIX index was built in 1992, there have been many large spikes. The closing high set in this month, just 52.3, is far from a record (below gray area).
We have noted before that instability drives drive stock – and therefore, business costs – more. This is because market manufacturers are more likely to lose for adverse selection and are informed to traders in a sharp market.
Interestingly, in the last two weeks, bids have also increased, and have been close to record levels since 2017. Data also shows that S&P 500 spread, in fact, was moving from spikes in VIX (below purple dots)-has been steadily growing since 2024.
Chart 2: We were widening before the recent spike in US spreads Vicks
Stock volumes climb new records
As the market went to the market, trading volumes also increased. In fact, the period after the US election has seen nine out of the top 10 volume days. A new record of about 31 billion shares trades on 9 April, which is more than doubled since last year.
As we often see in rapidly growing markets, less traders are ready to wait close to the business.
The MOC volume collapsed during Kovid’s instability, but they were trending since then when about 6% of the daily volume on a normal day was average. Last week, the Moc volume fell below 5% of the total daily versions (below blue dots).
Chart 3: Nine of the top 10 largest trading days have taken place in the last four months
Option versions hit new records as trading growing
Option trading also increased, setting up a new record for trading contracts (trading with 101.9 million contracts) on April 4, 2025, which was the second day after the US announcement of an anti -counter tariff.
The put-coal ratio also increased rapidly, showing that the trading focused too much on the put, providing negative security to investors (below green dots, anxis inverted).
Chart 4: Put-Call Ratio signaling investor relatively low recession compared to the previous period of market tension
Retail sold after tariff announcement (for a few days)
Retail traders were mostly buying stocks in 2025, even the market was sold through February (Dark Green Line).
After the mutual tariff declaration, the data indicates several days with significant net retail sales. Some of those days also saw more widespread-based sales, selling most sector nets. However, it was partially offset by purchasing a few days of large (more than $ 1 billion) of a few days.
Chart 5: Retail continuously dip buyers until the anti -retractor tariff was announced
A reminder on how the security of the market works
Such instability in markets is not new.
Important for investors, there are many guardrails in the stock market which are designed for slow sale due to uncertainty cell-offs, including:
1. Market Wide Circuit Breakers (MWCB), When the market falls significantly, all shares are stopped for 15 minutes. These are designed to give buyers a chance to better assess new fair values to understand and buy the influence of news. These S&P 500 index are triggered by intraday falls (but not up), and serve as the table below. We throw light on the fact that the market saw four MWCBs during the covid cell-off in March 2020.
2. Limit/limit the limit (LULD), Which are designed to prevent additional instability separately in each stock. When a stock goes down very quickly (or up), that stock is first placed in the “border state”, where additional sales (or purchases) cannot move more, but offset order can bring the stock price to the earlier price levels. If this does not happen after 15 seconds, the stock is stopped for 15 minutes and re -opened with auction.
Table 1: How to work
3. Clearly wrong (CE) There are rules for allowing clear error (eg “fat-ugly”) trades are to be busted. However, thanks to the existence of Luld band, where the market will not match the stock less (or more) than the LULD band, CE trade are relatively rare.
4. short selling Rules also affect shares that have fallen 10% in a day. For that and the next day, a variation is applied to the old “uptic rule”, banning small sales on the bid, ensuring that small sellers cannot bottom the prices of dialect through trades.
There is a possibility of more uncertainty ahead
The instability has calmed down since the 90-day expansion of the mutual tariff. However, the final tariffs are far from known, meaning that we can see a greater duration of more duration (and trading spikes) in 2025.
