DJIA: Some Comparisons
Just a little comparison of 2017, 2021, and 2025 plus more thoughts on tariffs.

So, I made the mistake of commenting on a local news story on Facebook, as old retired fools tend to do. The story was about the economy, and I was replying to someone who was defending Trump’s policies by saying that these things take time. My retort was a graph of the DJIA over the last month, which noted what he had accomplished in the last month. The person then told me that “this always happens” with a new administration. Not surprisingly, my response was to provide the numbers for 2017 (first Trump term) and 2021 (Biden’s term), which clearly demonstrated that, no, in fact, a drop of this nature is not the norm.
The DJIA has dropped 2,674.25 points from Trump’s first full day in office (1/21/25) through yesterday (3/12/25).
For the same timeframe in 2021, the DJIA gained 1,602.63.
In 2017, the number was 1,103.07.
It is true that in 2009, the DJIA was down 779.11 points over that period of time, but that was during the Great Recession that had started the year prior.
(And yes, I know that a better comparison would be percentage changes, but I am only willing to take the work needed for this post so far. This is already more research and documentation than a FB comment deserves!).
I found this FRED tool this morning that provides easy graphs, which is why my FB rumble has expanded into a post.
Here’s Trump’s 2025 graph:

Here’s the same period for Biden.

And here’s Trump’s 2017 (I don’t have Obama’s for 2009 because the database doesn’t go back that far).

Look, I get all the standard caveats about the DJIA not being the real economy, as well as the fact that one seven week period does not necessarily mean anything in the long run.
But I think it is pretty clear that what we are witnessing is, in fact, unusual. But more to the point, it is a direct reaction to Trump’s tariff policies. He is actively creating uncertainty, and the markets don’t like it. This is a man-made economic mess that is not only unnecessary, but that makes no sense.
For all the flaws of the Dow and the shortcomings of market-watching, this is a signal that these policies are not being well-received by the business class.
Nonetheless, the propaganda and ignorance continue.
For example, via the Independent, Laura Ingraham urges Fox viewers to ‘ignore’ stock market meltdown: ‘Trump is good for business’.
“Just ignore the sky-is-falling reports and the regime press,”
The bizarre thing about that formulation is that the “regime” is controlled by Trump, and things like Fox News behave very much like “the regime press.”
I saw a clip of a Trump official (IIRC) saying something similar about ignoring the market, but I can’t find it.
Somehow, I think that if the DJIA was down somewhere in the vicinity of 7.5% in the first 7 weeks of the Harris administration that FNC and its friends would be telling us to ignore the Dow.
And, of course, there is this.
And to be clear: Yes, a tariff is a tax. And no, the costs are not all born by someone else. While it is possible that a company might absorb some of the cost, the majority of it will be passed on to consumers.
Note, too, if the goal is negotiations with other countries (often for things like fentanyl, that have nothing to do with jobs, the economy, etc.), Trump’s tariffs will not bring in revenue, because if they are negotiating tactics, they will be removed once Trump gets whatever it is he is allegedly after.
If the goal is forcing on-shoring of manufacturing (which is a dubious proposition), it will take time (years, if not a decade) and in the meantime, prices go up and Trump can’t use tariffs as negotiating tools because if they are to be tools of mercantalism, they have to stay in place.
On that last count, there is no guarantee that companies will decide that manufacturing in the US is the most economical option, even with tariffs, which could result in the opposite effect.
Meanwhile, it should be noted that if tariffs on imported items are put into place, this will lead to an increase in prices for domestically produced items as well. Consider that the basic logic of competition suggests that I should sell my products at as low as price as I can while still maximizing profits. If I have a competitor, part of my goal is to price my products competitively, hopefully at a level lower than my competitor. This drives prices downward. If my competitor is forced by tariffs to raise their price 25%, I can raise mine 20% or 24% and still undercut them, assuming that our pre-tariff prices were competitive.
So, remember a tariff regime not only raises the prices of imported goods, it incentivized price increases on domestically produced products as well.
This is all Economics 101.
In regards to a good discussion of tariffs, I recommend the recent episode of the Ezra Klein Show, Why Trump’s Tariffs Won’t Work.
“He is actively creating uncertainty…”
Trump loves chaos and uncertainty. He’s said so many times.
Now you’re just making stuff up. Everyone knows steel mills are cheap and easy to build. Why, manypoeplesaythat the felon could build ten in between rounds of golf, if he wanted to. And refined iron grows like potatoes, underground.
It is absolutely not the case that in the first month of an administration the market sells off. That’s just a weird claim.
However, this short term and univariable (tariffs) “analysis” you present now twice is just as bad. There was a major selloff midway during Biden’s term, but that was driven by concerns over rate tightening. There was a selloff late in his term of similar magnitude to the current one. It is clear that the dominating variable for valuations for quite some time has been the Fed’s credit posture. (rates) But as always, many variable apply. Narrow attribution is a political comment, not an investment comment. I don’t know how much tariffs, credit and recession considerations contribute to the current market. Neither do you. No one does. But speculation sells clicks.
If tea leaf reading the public equity markets was so easy you should be investing in futures contracts. You’d make a fortune.
As an aside –
The impounding of information in the series of stock prices is well studied resulting in what is known as “the efficient market hypothesis.” (see Gene Fama) Which simply says that the next datapoint in the data series is a stochastic process. Its random; there is no prior information that predicts the next move. The press is full of people claiming to know why the market moves. They are charlatans. Note: what the EMH does NOT say is that the price of securities is “correct.” And oft made mistake. I broadened to the term “securities” because Fama and ken French did the same type of studies on futures contract pricing.
@Connor: Dude. it is insanely obvious what is going on.
That there may be other issues beyond tariffs that are relevant to the DJIA’s behavior is absoltuely true.
But you are lying or denying (or aren’t very smart) if you can’t see what the signal here is.
Part of the reason we are having recession considerations is because of the tariffs and all the uncertainty he is creating.
Are you really this dense? This partisan?
You may not know (nor do I) the exact percentage of market behavior is about tariffs, but you know that it is a significant part of it all, but you can’t admit it because you voted for and support the idiot in the White House who is creating this mess for the rest of us to live with.
But, of course, the other day you underscored your weird, petty partisanship with your lazy egg comment in the Open Forum.
wut
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/efficientmarkethypothesis.asp
It strikes me as internally inconsistent that the stock prices are based on all available information AND that everything is entirely random. If you had all the available information then randomness should be reduced and you should be able to price something accurately.
It strikes me that Tesla kills this theory. There is no way the price of Tesla contains all the available information to accurately price it AND that it’s price is almost totally driven by emotion.
Also, without being overly reductive, this and the legal theory that all people are inherently rational actors are garbage dreamt up by men who claim that they are not emotional AT ALL. Which, whooooooboy is that wildly wrong.
@Connor:
Perhaps even you have heard of, are aware of, the concept of “contrary opinion?” It’s real simple and works really well (the difficulty being discerning what opinion to be contrary to).
The idea is market tops come when people expect the market to rise, because they already own stocks and lack ability to buy more. People expecting a down market cause market bottoms, as they have already sold and are sitting on investible cash.
Here is a gift link to the NYT piece from March 3 – i.e., before the current selloff started.
The gist is that the big money people really like the Trump administration and are confident he will be good for the economy. Contrary opinion in action.
“NYT Gift”
More contrary opinion: I sold all the S&P 500 ETF in a brokerage account last November. A month or two later my broker called trying to talk me into getting back in because “Republicans are good for business.” I.e., big investment banker thinking. (I passed).
Really, our Business Genius friend is being utterly obtuse. It is one thing to claim that that any given day-to-day fluctuation of a stock (or the market as a whole) cannot be predicted or even fully understood.
But it is yet another to pretend like certain market behaviors aren’t in response to specific external stimuli.
Connor is just another anonymous internet rando who keeps having to change his nym when people stop paying attention to him. Ignore him. (Or maybe snark him for the lulz. But either way, it’s possible (maybe even probable) that any of the lurkers who might be here are already too far down the rabbit hole if what he says makes sense to them.)
@Steven L. Taylor:
I am going to take a S.W.A.G. (wild guess) that today’s market action will be driven largely by the latest vibes whether the government shuts down or not.
Poor Drew’s over here giving himself whiplash trying not to blame his chosen chaos monkeys for billions/trillions of lost market value. 😉
@Beth:
There is some partial validity to the “efficient market” idea but it is far from the whole story.
I think it is much more applicable to commodities markets than securities.
@charontwo:
Oh yeah, I can appreciate that. I can also see how it’s much more applicable to commodities where you can actually discern just how much of a commodity is out there and the randomness being created by actual randomness like weather, or transit problems. But the idea that the stock market has all the available information in the price is absurd and the randomness could be anything but random. I mean it’s not like people get busted for stock manipulation all the time. And I don’t mean insider trading wise cause that would use non-available information.
As an aside, I fundamentally hate that I understand this stuff. lol. Even though this is like a super high level overview.
@Steven L. Taylor
Trump’s 1st term tariffs added 35% to a large segment of my business’s COG. I could only pass a limited portion of this on to my clients. This was all taking place in a compressed timeframe that put price increases outside what was expected “normal” inflation.
MOREOVER, it played havoc with my profit margin. I could not apply my allocated margin on top the rapidly inflating costs and thereby further inflate my Trump inflated prices to my customers even more. I sucked it up. My gross revenue jumped in that time period and my net margin shrank. My ROI shrank. My “cost of money” therefore also rose. It took more capital to produce my previous net. I suffered and my clients suffered.
Trump has not shown himself to be a savvy “businessman” with the kind of comprehensive grasp of economics that is required of our nation’s top executive. Far from it. He just excels at promoting his scheme du jour to undiscerning minds, and browbeating the hell out of his opposition and his critics. This is no way to run a country, let alone a superpower.
@charontwo: I used to believe that Republicans were “good for business,” too. As I observed more, I came to realize that Republicans were more “good for owners of capital” than for “business.” And even then, not as good as they imagined.
Trump is f’ing retirees right up the poop chute.
I hope all the MAGA grannies are happy.
At almost 1pm cdt it is down about 1.5% today alone.
But I am sure that has nothing to do with tariffs, trade wars, government shutdowns, or Trump-made recession fears. I am sure it is somehow Biden’s fault!
@Steven L. Taylor:
Yesterday when inflation numbers were good, it was Trump’s doing.
Today, when wholesale inflation is up, it’s on Biden.
It nuanced…lol
@Steven L. Taylor: Also, we just had an inflation report, which showed inflation went down and the stock market is still sinking fast. Typically the stock market sees low inflation as a signal to lower interest rates. But it’s still going down.
@Steven L. Taylor:
In the last month, The Dow is down almost 9%. The S and P is down 9.6%. The Nasdaq is down 13%. The Russell 2000 index of small-cap stocks is also down almost 13%.
Trump is responsible for this. Full stop.
@Beth:
I think of playing the market as gambling.
As to rational actors, even if everyone acted rationally at all times, no one could ever discern all the rational motivations of everyone else.
Gambling, though, is something I know a bit about. Essentially there are two kinds of games: those with only independent events, and those without independent events. the first are as random as the randomization factor (dice, cards, random number generators, etc.)
The second has random elements, but follows trends and can be gamed by the players to overcome the house edge. The best, and about the only, example is blackjack, if dealt from a single deck or from two decks, and provided the cards are shuffled only before play.
I’ve several rules for responsible gambling. The second is: don’t gamble on games you don’t understand (the first is: you will expect to lose money).
S&P 500 chart:
(You can choose the time frame)
“Chart“
Trump has great predatory instincts, but his ‘plan’ is a political self-own. He thinks it’s all going to come out roses when we re-shore manufacturing? He’s imagining that people are going to put up with crashing stocks, rising unemployment, rising inflation and what’s starting to look like a serious retail collapse. . . and be OK because in five years or so we’ll have more factories?
Any re-shoring he does announce will be vaporware. Nothing is real with the Rapist-in-Chief until financing is in place, permits are signed, and construction can be carried out. He’s talking about a massive increase in domestic ship-building. I don’t believe new shipyards are as quick to build as meme coins are to create. And BTW, where are the experienced workers?
If I were the investing type I’d be investing in European weapons producers. And I’d short US weapons producers. People don’t just buy our toys because they’re the best, they invest in US arms because we used to be trustworthy. As foreign weapons sales drop off, the cost to us of domestic weapons goes up.
But it’ll all be fine because, per @Connor: we’re going to see a huge rush to drill baby drill. (oil drilling stocks down ~25% since Trump took office.)
Apropos the above:
Portugal cancels its F-35 purchase, valued at 5+ billion.
@Connor: I just returned from a cruise, where a significant percent ( almost 40%) of my fellow travelers were non US. As they were non Americans, they have no intrinsic basis for democratic/republican partisanship.
However, to a person, they wanted to understand how American voters choose to elect a radical felon. Popular reaction was WTF is wrong with you Americans and your President is insane.
I was surprised at these foreigners willingness to express their opinions – something that many Americans are afraid to discuss with their family or neighbors.
Other lies peddles by Trump supporters about things that “always happen” when a new administration takes over:
– The FBI Director gets replaced (in truth, it was unprecedented);
– The Chair of the Joint Chiefs gets replaced (also unprecedented);
– The President fires a bunch of Kennedy Center directors and appoints political cronies in their place (ditto).
The proportion of MAGA supporters who will spot the lies ≅ 5%.