Wall Street advances as investors assess sentiment data

• Indexes down: Dow 0.96%, S&P 500 1.47%, Nasdaq 2.17%

Oct 10 (Reuters) – Wall Street’s main indexes fell sharply on Friday, after U.S. President Donald Trump said he was weighing a “massive increase” in tariffs on Chinese imports over a rare earth dispute.

In a Truth Social post, Trump also said there was no reason to meet with China’s President Xi Jinping in two weeks in South Korea as planned and that China had been sending letters to countries worldwide saying it planned to impose export controls on every element of production related to rare earths.

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The comments upended what had been a relatively calm session for markets, which were gaining on hopes of interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve.

A fresh flare-up in U.S.-China trade tensions could weigh on global growth and cloud the outlook for corporate America, which is already navigating higher costs.

“He’s caught the market off guard again and he’s thrown more question marks into it,” said Robert Pavlik, senior portfolio manager at Dakota Wealth.

At 11:31 a.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (.DJI), opens new tab fell 446.44 points, or 0.96%, to 45,911.98, the S&P 500 (.SPX), opens new tab lost 99.19 points, or 1.47%, to 6,635.51 and the Nasdaq Composite (.IXIC), opens new tab lost 495.46 points, or 2.17%, to 22,525.37.

“We finally got through the worst of the tariff concerns, and now we find ourselves once again faced with another round of them,” said Steve Sosnick, chief market analyst at Interactive Brokers.

American flags are displayed on screens on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., September 22, 2025. REUTERS/Jeenah Moon/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tabThe S&P 500 tech (.SPLRCT), opens new tab sector lost 1.9%. Financials (.SPSY), opens new tab fell 1% on the S&P 500, while energy (.SPNY), opens new tab stocks declined 1.3%.The Philadelphia SE Semiconductor index (.SOX), opens new tab dropped 3.4%, among the worst hit after Trump’s announcement.The CBOE volatility index (.VIX), opens new tab, investors’ fear gauge, spiked to the highest in a month.U.S.-listed shares of Chinese companies dropped sharply, with heavyweights Alibaba Group Holding , JD.com Inc and PDD Holdings (PDD.O), opens new tab down between 5.5% and 6%.Qualcomm (QCOM.O), opens new tab fell 4.6% after China’s market regulator said the country has launched an antitrust investigation into the semiconductor manufacturer over its acquisition of Israel’s Autotalks.

Separately, a preliminary reading of the University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index for October came in at 55, compared with the estimate of 54.2, according to economists polled by Reuters.

Declining issues outnumbered advancers by a 2.73-to-1 ratio on the NYSE and by a 3.36-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq.

The S&P 500 posted 17 new 52-week highs and 12 new lows while the Nasdaq Composite recorded 93 new highs and 82 new lows.

Reporting by Niket Nishant and Sukriti Gupta in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D’Silva and Shilpi Majumdar

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Niket Nishant reports on breaking news and the quarterly earnings of Wall Street’s largest banks, card companies, financial technology upstarts and asset managers. He also covers the biggest IPOs on U.S. exchanges, and late-stage venture capital funding alongside news and regulatory developments in the cryptocurrency industry. His writing appears on the finance, business, markets and future of money sections of the website. He did his post-graduation from the Indian Institute of Journalism and New Media (IIJNM) in Bengaluru.