Monday Takeaways: What to Expect With the April 2 Tariff Deadline

Shah Gilani|March 31, 2025

No bounce. No dead cat bounce. No snapback rally.

That was last week’s story as markets closed at their weakest point on Friday.

Now futures point to more selling as we approach President Trump’s “Liberation Day” on April 2…

While the President has promised these tariffs will be “less harmful” than what our trading partners have imposed on us…

The markets are still struggling with the uncertainty.

I’ve spoken with several New York hedge fund managers who see a potential short-covering rally opportunity…

But I’m warning investors to be careful as we navigate this challenging week ahead.

Tune in for your Monday Takeaways. Don’t miss what’s moving your money… NOW.

Click on the image below to watch.

---

Transcript

Hey, everybody. Shah Gilani coming to you from beautiful Ponte Vedra Beach in Florida. I’m at the Investment U conference.

It’s going to be an interesting and wonderful week. It will be interesting because based on the takeaways from last week and the futures this morning, markets are rattled.

Takeaway from last week, people, is the market closed pretty much on the weakest point it could on Friday. There was no bounce. There was no dead cat bounce. There was no snapback rally.

Even though in the beginning of the week, it looked like, OK, maybe some of the shorts are going to have to cover. Maybe that can lead to something lasting. No.

Takeaway was selling across the board into the close for the most part. So that’s what we take away from last week. Now this morning, futures are down. We’re looking at the Nasdaq composite down about 1.5 percent.

The S&P is going to be down about 1 percent at the open. We’ll see how the day goes, obviously. But guess what? April 2 is Liberation Day, and markets have no idea what really is going to come about.

I think we have a pretty good, I would say, we’re all trying to game out what the tariffs are going to be, how across the board they’re going to be, but maybe how deep they are. But we don’t really know. We’ll find out on Wednesday. Now President Trump has said that they’re not going to be as bad as people think.

They’re going to be less harmful than what our friends and foes have hit us with in terms of the tariffs our goods and products are subjected to. We’ll see. I think there’s going to be a lot of pushback in the market because the uncertainty is going to likely continue. My takeaway from this week is markets are going to have a pretty hard time digesting whatever the president says.

Whatever tariffs are laid out, there’s going to be a lot of hand-wringing as to for how long and how deep and what kind of inflation that might cause. Will that lead to a recession? There’s all that. Now there’s one other takeaway I want to leave you with this morning.

Talked to a bunch of my friends, most of them in New York running hedge funds and big trading desks.

Quite a few of them are thinking that we could get some kind of snapback rally on Wednesday. Once these announcements are out in the open, they’re saying maybe that removes a lot of the uncertainty because then we’ll be certain as to what the president’s plan is, how bad it’s going to be, and we can get past that. Then a lot of those shorts might cover, and then we might have a snapback rally. Now this is a fast money crowd talking here.

These are the guys that try and move markets. So when I’ve asked them why, “Because we think we can move the market,” you’re telling me. Because there are so many shorts and so many nervous investors there. If there’s nothing much going on, it’s quiet volume trading wise, flows wise, they can start buying.

They can buy all they’re planning on buying a lot of the really beaten up names, a lot of the big cap techniques. Now that’s going to take a lot of firepower to do this, but they think maybe if the market’s quiet enough, in other words, the uncertainty may be wrenched out of it, wrung out of it, and they can start buying and they can precipitate a short covering rally from everybody else and also the sideline money to come in like, “Oh, this is the buy the dip moment” now that we know. So takeaway from that is entirely possible, but be careful out there because I don’t know how long you’re running.

These guys, by the way, they’re not long-term holders. They’re trading. So they’re looking for a profit off of a pop that they hope to create once the uncertainty is momentarily passed. We’ll see.

It’s going to be an interesting week. Takeaway from all of this is, careful out there. Cheers.