President Donald Trump's tweets struck as quickly as a scythe on Thursday and cut the legs out from not just a budding stock rally but several different markets.
Within seconds of the president saying on Twitter that he plans more tariffs on Chinese goods, prices for stocks, gold and even measures of investors' optimism screeched in a simultaneous U-turn.
These new tariffs of 10% would go into effect on Sept. 1 and affect goods and services from China that haven't already been hit with tariffs of 25%.
The fear is how much more Trump's trade war with China, the world's second-largest economy, will escalate. The new tariffs would more directly affect consumer goods — retailers such as Best Buy tanked Thursday afternoon. If the tariffs go up another step, to 25% on all Chinese imports, and remain on for four to six months, Morgan Stanley economists say they expect a recession within nine months.
Thursday marked the second straight day that markets made an immediate, 180-degree turn. On Wednesday, the trigger was investors' disappointment in the Federal Reserve's chairman, who didn't commit in a press conference to as many future interest-rate cuts as investors had hoped for. But Thursday's whiplash-inducing ride was even wilder. Among the day's big moves:
— BROAD U.S. STOCK INDEXES: The S&P 500 index was up as much as 1.1% in the morning following encouraging profit reports from several big companies. But it took a nosedive following the tweets and was down as much as 1.2% before ending the day 0.9% lower.
— INVESTOR FEAR. One of the main ways to measure fear in the market is through an index that shows how much traders are paying for protection from upcoming swings in price for stocks. On Thursday morning, pre-tweets, the VIX index was down as much as 14.8%. Post-tweets: up as much as 20.7%.
— BANK STOCKS: Banks do well when they can lend money out at much higher interest rates than they're paying for the cash they're bringing in. But longer-term Treasury yields plunged Thursday as investors scrambled for safer investments, crimping banks' potential profits. Bank of America went from being up 1.3% in the morning to being down as much as 4.3% after the tweets.
— EXPECTATIONS FOR MORE RATE CUTS: On Wednesday afternoon, after the Fed had cut interest rates for the first time in a decade, investors were nearly split on whether the central bank would follow up with another cut at its next meeting in September. Traders on Wednesday were pricing in a roughly 51% probability of a cut.
Post-tweets, those same traders said the probability had jumped to 70%. The escalating trade war threatens to make businesses and consumers more cautious in their spending, and the expectation is that the Fed will be forced to cut rates more deeply to protect the economy.
— RETAILER STOCKS: Shares of Best Buy, Gap and other retailers were some of the hardest hit on worries that higher prices for Chinese-made electronics and clothes will drag down their sales totals.
Kohl's sank 7.8%, and Macy's lost 6.7%.
— GOLD: When everything's falling apart, investors often run for gold, thinking it's the safest thing to own. Gold was down as much as 1.8% in the morning, but it jumped following Trump's tweets and was up as much as 1.4% in the afternoon.
If Trump's trade war does force the Fed into more rate cuts, it could lead to higher inflation, which is generally good for the price of gold.
NEW YORK (AP) — A man who spent nearly two decades in prison for a roughly $550 robbery was exonerated and freed Monday, after prosecutors said they now agree he didn't commit the crime.
“It cost me 20 years, but they said they corrected it now. So that's all that matters. So I’m good with that,” Kenneth Windley, 61, said as he left a Brooklyn courthouse, at liberty for the first time since 2007.
A judge threw out his conviction and dismissed his case entirely, at the request of both prosecutors and Windley's lawyers. Prosecutors said new evidence — including confessions from two other men who were convicted of similar robberies — supported his longstanding claim of innocence.
“This case is really a cautionary tale of how things can seem one way but, without careful analysis, not be what it purports to be," Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez, a Democrat, said after shaking Windley's hand outside court.
“Had we known what the evidence was, this case should have never happened,” he said, adding that he had apologized privately to Windley.
Windley was arrested in 2005 after buying a stove for his mother with a money order that turned out to be stolen.
It had been snatched from Gerald Ross, 70, by two thieves who followed him home from a trip to a bank and a post office. The thieves put Ross in a chokehold and took money orders, cash, and a bank book from him, prosecutors said in a report released Monday.
Ross regularly got money orders for his rent and life insurance payments at that post office, which helped him and the authorities follow a paper trail after the robbery. The trail soon led to Windley, who had given his name, driver’s license and address when purchasing the stove at an appliance store.
From the start, Windley said he had nothing to do with the robbery. He said he'd simply bought a $542.77 money order at a discount from a couple of acquaintances, who insisted that it was valid but that they couldn't use it for a bureaucratic reason.
“He was duped," one of Windley's lawyers, David Shanies, told the court Monday.
Ross identified Windley as one of the thieves from a photo array and then a live lineup, both of them six weeks or longer after the robbery. Windley testified at his trial, telling jurors how his acquaintances had approached him and sold him the money order. But the jury convicted him in 2007 of robbery. Because of prior felony convictions, he was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison. His appeals failed.
Early on, Windley told prosecutors what he knew about the men who sold him the money order: their nicknames and some information about their legal names. After his conviction, a friend and private investigators helped him flesh out the men's identities and persuade them to come forward about what had happened, according to the D.A.’s report.
In sworn statements and then in interviews with D.A.'s office representatives, the two men said that they had robbed Ross together and that Windley was not involved, according to the report. It called their admissions “compelling.”
It doesn’t give their names, referring to them only as “Suspect 1” and “Suspect 2.” Both are serving prison time on other robbery convictions, according to the D.A.’s office. Those convictions all involved male victims in their 60s and older who were followed home from banks and check-cashing offices in Brooklyn in 2005 and 2006.
If the jury had known those men's identities and robbery records, the information would likely have raised reasonable doubt about the charge against Windley, prosecutors concluded.
No new charges have been brought in the case. The legal time frame for bringing charges ran out years ago, and Ross has died.
Windley, heading off Monday afternoon to celebrate with his family, said he wasn't bitter about what he'd been through.
“I’m just going to move on from there,” he said.
Kenneth Windley, right, shakes hands with Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez at the courthouse in the Brooklyn borough of New York, Monday, March 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Jennifer Peltz)
Kenneth Windley, left, leaves the courthouse with his mother, Francina Windley Patterson, in the Brooklyn borough of New York, Monday, March 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Jennifer Peltz)
Kenneth Windley, center, speaks with reporters while accompanied by his fiancée, Donna Carter, left, and attorney David Shanies, right, outside of the courthouse in the Brooklyn borough of New York, Monday, March 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Jennifer Peltz)
Kenneth Windley, right, speaks to reporters while accompanied by his fiancée, Donna Carter, outside the courthouse in the Brooklyn borough of New York, Monday, March 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Jennifer Peltz)
Kenneth Windley, left, leaves a courthouse with his mother, Francina Windley Patterson, in the Brooklyn borough of New York, Monday, March 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Jennifer Peltz)
