Live Nasdaq Composite: Is This the Start of a 2025 Crash?

Talk about a roller coaster. After spiraling by over 600 points, the Dow Jones Industrial Average finished in the green, while the S&P 500 similarly eked out a modest gain. The Nasdaq Composite finished slightly lower, but far from its worst levels of the day. While recession fears have been stoked now that the economy is officially slowing down, the markets shook it off, perhaps in anticipation of Meta (Nasdaq: META) and Microsoft’s (Nasdaq: MSFT) earnings this afternoon.

President Trump has attributed the unexpected GDP contraction to the Biden Administration, surmising that economic growth will “take a while.” In the meantime, he urges Americans to stay patient as the next economic boom awaits. Stocks have trimmed their losses.

One Wall Street firm has turned cautious on the AI boom. Seaport Research has reportedly downgraded shares of AI darling Nvidia (Nasdaq: NVDA) to a “sell” rating, owing to worries about AI spending from businesses. Analyst Jay Goldberg believes that while Nvidia was a clear winner in the AI mania, the prospects are already built into the stock. Nvidia stock has shaved off 20% of its value year-to-date.

The stock market has come off its lows of the day, with the Nasdaq Composite trimming its declines from approximately 3% to 1% while the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 are down fractionally. Today’s sell-off was sparked by an economic contraction in Q1, thrusting the possibility of a recession further into the spotlight.

In what is shaping up to be an historic market sell-off, stocks have come off their worst levels of the day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average has trimmed its losses from over 600 points to about 400 points, while the Nasdaq Composite and S&P 500 are down by barely 2% each.

In addition to the GDP shocker, the markets received more economic data to process from the labor market. Private payrolls rose by 62,000 in April, falling short of Dow Jones expectations for nearly double that growth. March saw a gain of 147,000 private payrolls, making the sting even worse. Companies are placing hiring on hold as they await the full impact of the Trump administration’s tariffs.

According to Goldman Sachs, if the economy were to slip into a recession, the stock market selling would intensify. Goldman Sachs Micro Strategist Vicky Chang warned that unlike past market cycles, this time around, headline risk signals the market bottom, not the economic trough, saying, “We still think there is significant vulnerability in a recession scenario, even if the worst of the underlying ‘shock’ has passed.”