(BFM Stock Exchange) – The New York Stock Exchange experienced a very difficult session on Monday and the Nasdaq Composite has had its worst day since September 2022 with a drop of 4%. Beyond this single session, Wall Street has been hard since the start of the year because the magnificent seven and more generally the American tech no longer seduce as much. And Donald Trump’s erratic policy does not help.

In his morning market points, Jim Reid, famous strategist at Deutsche Bank, likes to tell personal anecdotes. For example, this Tuesday, March 11, the scholarship expert evokes his Cornelian dilemma: watching the Liverpool-PSG match tonight or attending the meeting of the parents of his daughter’s school? After discussions with his wife, he decides to record to look later … the evening of parents of students.

“On a more serious note, we would certainly not want to watch a replay on Monday session at Wall Street,” continues Jim Reid.

And for good reason: the New York Stock Exchange has suffered enormously. The S&P 500, the most representative barometer of the Parisian square, abandoned 2.7% while the Nasdaq Composite, rich in technological values, fell 4%, accusing its highest drop since September 2022, according to CNBC.

>> Access our exclusive graphic analyzes, and enter into the confidence of the trading portfolio

Beyond this only session, Wall Street has been hard since the start of the year. The S&P 500 abandons 4.5% over the whole of 2025 and the Nasdaq Composite loses 9.5%. Simple comparison, the CAC 40 takes 9.7% over the same period.

The trend does not seem to be to improve. Under-term contracts, derivative instruments which often give a good trend on the underlying indices, only increase very slightly this Tuesday, with an increase of 0.5% for the Nasdaq 100 and 0.37% on the S&P 500. Cited by Bloomberg, Morgan Stanley estimates that the S&P 500 should fall to 5,500 points by the end of June, against 5.641 points at the moment.

How to explain such a dropout of Wall Street, whose progression seemed unstoppable a few months ago? Here are a number of reasons.

1/ The Trump administration prepares the Americans for hard times

For Stephen Innes, from SPI AM, the trigger for the fall on Monday is to be found on the side of the White House.

“The culprit? The growing fears that the economic reshuffle operated by Donald Trump does not derail the engine of American growth and does not trigger a recession, hence the generalized risk movement,” he explains.

“The markets reacted to the signs indicating that the Trump administration could be willing to tolerate a temporary ‘disturbance of the economy,” said UBS.

Questioned this weekend on the possibility of a stronger recession or inflation which would be caused by customs surcharge, Donald Trump did not respond clearly. The American president recognized, however, that a transition period “would take place, and admitted that the customs surcharge he implements could have an inflationary impact. His trade secretary, Scott Bessent, spoke to him” adjustments “and an American economy which could have a little dust.

“With both the layoffs of federal employees, customs duties and the tightening of financial conditions, the traders ask themselves the following question: how much will Washington tolerate the pain before giving in?”, Note Stephen Innes.

2/ Chaos on customs duties reigns (and worried)

Wall Street had enthusiastically welcomed Donald Trump’s victory last November, somewhat minimizing the repercussions of customs duties wanted by the Republican president and applauding the tax cuts he provided.

A few months later, everything changed and the S&P 500 has now returned to its level prior to Donald Trump’s victory (5,614.56 points Monday against 5,782.76 points on November 5).

Large -scale tax cuts from the Trump administration are compromised by the difficulties in the congress, where the Senate and the House of Representatives are not entirely on the same page. The second room seems to be concerned with the impact on the deficit that such a measure would induce. “The probability of a significant budgetary supplies in the United States decreases in the face of the dynamics of the congress,” observes Barclays.

As for customs surcharge, the procrastination of Donald Trump, who twice pushed the deadline for those struck by imports from Mexico and Canada, destabilize the market and economic players.

“For the moment, the muddled tariff policy of the Trump administration contributes above all to strengthening the uncertainty of investors and the wait -and -see of businesses and households,” notes Christopher Dembik of Pictet AM.

“The implementation of Trump’s agenda creates a lot of risks and concerns. It is not only a question of the impact on confidence. This is also the fact that the combative approach creates much more space for retaliatory measures from business partners,” explains Barclays.

3/ The American economy deteriorates

If the American economy still holds the road relatively well, several recent indicators have shown signs of shortness of breath, which has weighed on American actions in recent weeks.

John Plassard notes that inflation has increased in January, to return to 3%, that retail sales, a measure of consumer spending, have taken out 0.9% over the same month, or that the consumer confidence index measured by the University of Michigan fell to its lowest level in February for about a year and a half.

A projection made a lot of noise on the market: that of the Atlanta Federal Reserve. The “GDPNOW” model of this local FED, which does not strictly speaking a forecast because based solely on known data, calculated a fall in the American gross domestic product of 2.8% in the first quarter of 2025.

Oddo BHF explains that this result is due to a significant increase in imports, in anticipation of Donald Trump’s customs duties. “What is any rational agent who is threatening to pay their imports 25% more expensive in a few weeks? He buys foreign products as soon as possible. This phenomenon has taken such a magnitude that the deficit in trade in goods has scored a new record at more than $ 150 billion in January,” notes the broker.

“The Americans have, for example, increased their oil purchases from Canada and repatriated the gold bars deposited in Swiss banks (imports from Switzerland have almost quintuplely),” continues the design office.

Oddo BHF does not think that, as the calculations of the Atlanta Fed presage, the GDP will fall back in the first quarter. “We can assume that this will not be the case because what is imported will be either stored or consumed, compensating for the negative effect on GDP, but these disturbances illustrate the fragility of the American economy,” explains Oddo BHF.

“The forecasts for American GDP of the first quarter of 2025 promise to be rather pessimistic. Economic data surprises by their weakness,” summarizes Axel Botte by Ostrum AM.

4/ The seven magnificent are hard

It is impossible to mention the drop in Wall Street without talking about the air hole in technological values. In particular the famous “seven magnificent” Wall Street, namely Tesla, Apple, Amazon, Nvidia, Microsoft, Meta, Alphabet.

With the exception of Meta who no longer has a lot of margin (+2%), all these values ​​have been suffering since the beginning of the year. Apple cedes 9.2%over the whole of 2025, Microsoft lost 9.8%, Amazon folds by 11%, alphabet fell 12.4%, Nvidia abandoned 20.3%and Tesla collapses by 45%.

The fears about the economic situation obviously weigh on these values. Like the rise in bond rate, itself due to inflation anticipations and increases in the American deficit.

Above all, the theme of artificial intelligence, which has worn Wall Street, over the past two years, is running out of steam. The prowess of Deepseek, a Chinese company that has developed models of AI as performing as those of large American groups and a priori much less expensive, are not unrelated.

“The launch of Deepseek questioned the concept of domination of American technology, which fell on the stock market,” notes Bank of America. “I think that the information concerning Deepseek was much more important than what was believed after the initial attention was calmed,” points this Tuesday Jim Reid.

Investors have revised their requirements on the performance of large tech groups and are more eyebrow in the tens of billions of dollars than these same companies predict in artificial intelligence.

The disappointing results in the last quarter of Amazon, Alphabet and Microsoft in the Cloud (dematerialized IT), a segment which is supposed to benefit directly from these investments in the AI, obviously did not reassure.

5/ Investors prefer Europe to Wall Street

Due to the previous explanations, a rotation of American tech actions and more broadly American actions, has been taking place for a few weeks, towards European actions. Investors believe that tech has exhausted its potential and therefore seeks other pockets of values, especially on European actions, much cheaper than Americans.

Based on the profits expected in 2025, Christopher Dembik, investment advisor at Pictet AM, notes that at the start of the year, this discount of European shares amounted to 40% on the basis of the expected profits in 2025. This “discount” now fell to 30%, but it was 15% before the pandemic, adds the expert.

“The ‘Hedge Funds’, hedge funds which are often initiators of trend, have never sold so much American actions to buy European actions, even during the correction of 2022”, explains Alexandre Baradez, analyst at IG. These purchases have, in addition, been facilitated by the very low level of the euro against the dollar, he adds.

6/The Fed has paused its drops in rates

No offense to Donald Trump, who demanded rate drops from the American Federal Reserve (Fed), central banks are independent in developed economies.

However, the American institution has paused its cycle of lowering guiding rates in January. The American institution is particularly concerned about the impact of Donald Trump’s policy in matters of customs and immigration from customs.

The absence for the moment of a more accommodating policy on the part of the Fed deprives the actions of a support factor.

As a reminder, lower key rates on the part of central banks have a double positive effect for actions. First of all, they decrease the cost of credit, allowing households and businesses more to borrow and invest. Which feeds growth and by ricochet carries actions.

Then, lower rates “pay less the money deposited”, recalls Alexandre Baradez. “Money circulates more and investors are more encouraged to seek performance and therefore invest in stocks,” he explains