US President Donald Trump. Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
Business Investing
This is the stock market’s worst start to a presidential term in modern history
By Harry Enten and Matt Egan, CNN, 5 minute read Published 6:37 AM EDT, Mon April 7, 2025
CNN — President Donald Trump warned Americans in 2024 that a vote for Vice President Kamala Harris would be a vote for a market meltdown.
“You want to see a market crash? If we lost this election, I think the market would go down the tubes,” Trump said at a Pennsylvania rally in late October.
Weeks earlier, Trump confidently predicted that if he lost, “the result will be a Kamala economic crash, a 1929-style depression.”
Trump won the election, but he may have been right about a crash occurring after the election.
Trump and his tariffs have taken a bull stock market and are on the precipice of turning it into a bear faster than any president has overseen in modern history. If the stock market closes in bear territory – a drop of 20% from a recent peak – it would be the earliest in a new administration a bull market has turned into a bear in the history of the S&P 500, which dates back to 1957.
These same tariffs may also take a booming economy and turn it into a recession.
The S&P 500 had lost 15% of its value since Inauguration Day as of Sunday night. And that doesn’t even count the massive losses set for Monday’s opening bell.
