Major world market indices tend to ignore the impact of U.S. president Donald Trump's trade war actions. The investment community calmly digested his announcement of 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminium imports to the U.S., just a few days after unsurprising 10% on China's goods. The metal tariffs will be added to current levies, which Trump already imposed during his first term, as the measures were partially retained by the Biden administration. As a result, the S&P 500 broad barometer of Wall Street stopped climbing around 6,100 for going backwards last Friday's evening on February 7 and began regular trading on February 10 just one step below the psychologically important figure of 6,000, particularly at 5,992.80. However, it ended the regular session at 6,065.50, which represented a gain of more than a full percentage point. These same types of smoothed-out effects were seen during Trump's first term. Mutual protectionist measures clearly limited global economic growth in 2017-2019, but did not prevent the stock market rally from developing further to new record highs. At that time, the U.S. S&P 500 has grown from nearly 2,250 to almost 3,400 points. In 2025, the capital flight from accumulated inflation seems to be equal to a scorched earth effect under the feet of rich and middle class who previously held conservatively to cash deposits and Treasury notes, and now enhancing their stakes in sustainable businesses and pushing risk-on buttons for the artificial intelligence as well as various big data and cloud tech names.

Investors may be hoping that Trump's tough first steps are more of a bid to open subsequent trade talks with more balanced end-terms. Just new positioning for the new division of our small world. If so, then some relief may be offered at least to Mexico and Canada as immediate neighbours. As an example, Trump already postponed actually imposing 25% tariffs on these two major suppliers for the U.S. industries. Trump's team also granted quotas for exemptions from initial tariffs during his first term, for particular countries, and then struck a "big deal" with China based on concessions from hard-line starting positions. We consider the idea of markets expecting similar scenarios here and now.

It seems, however, that the degradation of the purchasing value of depreciated dollars and euros, as a result of the intense previous activity of the printing press in the COVID times, as well as printing money because of geopolitical tensions and internal problems, is simply a much stronger driver of buying more stocks despite climbing indexes compared to the negative factor of tariff battles. January inflation may push the S&P 500 even more upstairs if signs of cooling price growth will be demonstrated on a MoM or YoY basis. But even sticky inflation pressure scenarios would result in some delay in the bullish race, though reversal patterns on charts could currently be excluded from being considered.

Even though the leading EU economies are clearly unhappy with the prospect of Trump's nearly promised tariffs for the EU as well, European stock markets continue to grow as if nothing had happened. Although German industrial companies are suffering from expensive energy supplies, the German DAX 40 index of blue chips (GER40) is at new historical highs and only a hundred points away from the 22,000 mark. It was ranging from 19,000 to 19,650 before the end of last autumn, but managed to gain double-digit percentages in a couple of months. This looks as a proof that market growth is not at all identical to economic growth forecasts. A need to avoid risks is a more notable motivator than economic comparison or the AI-driven optimism led by Nvidia. Yet, the recent sell-off in Nvidia, triggered by Chinese startup DeepSeek’s breakthrough, is a buying opportunity again, which is confirmed by a nearly 17% rebound from fresh dips.