S&P 500 is set for longest weekly slide since 2022

Wall Street is bracing for extra volatility as an estimated $4.5 trillion of contracts tied to stocks, indexes and exchange-traded funds expire

Another selloff in several megacaps drove stocks toward their longest streak of weekly losses since May 2022, with the market also hit by weaker-than-estimated outlooks from bellwethers across industries.

Equities got pummeled on Friday, with the S&P 500 down about 1% and on track for its fifth consecutive week of declines. Wall Street is bracing for extra volatility as an estimated $4.5 trillion of contracts tied to stocks, indexes and exchange-traded funds expire. Nvidia Corp.’s “death cross” technical pattern kept traders on high alert about the potential for further declines. Forecasts from FedEx Corp. to Nike Inc., Micron Technology Inc. and Lennar Corp. disappointed investors. Tesla Inc. climbed.

“We’re approaching today’s session with a particularly elevated degree of caution,” said Ian Lyngen at BMO Capital Markets.

Trillions of dollars have been shaved from US equity values in the past month as concerns over an economic slowdown, the impact of tariffs, geopolitical risks and questions about lofty tech valuations unnerved traders. Just a week after the S&P 500 tumbled into a 10% correction, bounces have failed to hold, punishing one of the most time-honored investment strategies: dip buying.

A volatile stretch that’s plagued Wall Street in 2025 is likely to persist until at least the second half of the year, with equity prices remaining below the highs hit last month, according to Morgan Stanley’s Michael Wilson.

“This is going to be a rolling recovery is my best guess,” Wilson said this week in an interview with Bloomberg Television. “We think new highs are probably out of the question in the first half of this year.”

The S&P 500 fell 0.9%. The Nasdaq 100 slid 0.9%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 1.1%.

The yield on 10-year Treasuries dropped two basis points to 4.22%. The dollar rose 0.2%.

In a stock market battered by trade turmoil and growing fears of an economic slowdown, individual traders pumped more than $12 billion into US equities in the week ending March 19, data from JPMorgan Chase & Co. showed.

Market watchers keep a close eye on retail traders as they are often the last to cut their exposure to stocks, so the latest bout of aggressive buying from mom-and-pop investors may suggest that equities haven’t found the bottom yet.

Investors are dismissing the risks that a full-fledged trade war would pose to stocks as “monster” flows of capital keep pouring into global equity markets, Bank of America Corp.’s Michael Hartnett said.

The fact that inflows into stocks have reached a year-to-date peak and that indexes in Germany and China — two top exporters to the US — have rallied since the election of Donald Trump suggests investors are skeptical that US tariffs will cause a recession.