Warren Buffett announced at Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting that he will step down as CEO at the end of 2025 and recommend Greg Abel as his successor. This marks the end of an era for Berkshire, which Buffett transformed from a struggling textile company into a massive conglomerate. While Buffett will remain involved, Abel will have the final say in operations and capital deployment.
S&P 500 Consumer Staples sector is the only sector to rise since Trump’s inauguration, while consumer-discretionary stocks have seen the biggest declines.
Tuesday marked the 100th day of Trump 2.0. The period turned out to be the worst start for stocks to a president's term since the 1970s:
The Dow Jones Industrial Average has dropped 6.8% since Inauguration Day on Jan. It was the worst start to a presidency for the index since the start of Richard Nixon's second term in 1973.
The S&P 500 is down 7.3% in that period and also had its worst first 100 days since Nixon's second term.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite is down 11%, its worst start for a presidency since George W. Bush's first term in 2001.
The Russell 2000 gauge of smaller stocks is down 13.2%. That was its worst first 100-day period to start a presidency on record.
China’s manufacturing activity contracted by the most in 18 months in April, according to an official survey, in an early sign of the economic impact from Trump’s trade war. The country’s official purchasing managers’ index came in at its weakest level since December 2023.
The U.S. economy shrank at the start of this year, as trade turmoil began to hit, prompting businesses to stock up on goods from overseas. GDP data for the first three months of 2025 showed a contraction of 0.3%, down from 2.4% growth in the previous quarter. That was the first decline since the start of 2022.
Apple has been referred to a criminal prosecutor by a US judge who found the tech giant “thwarted” her legal order to change its US App Store rules. The judge ruled that one of Apple’s executives lied under oath to cover up an attempt to bypass the injunction, marking a stunning rebuke to the iPhone maker and a new twist in its long legal battle with Epic Games.
Tesla’s board opened a search for Musk’s successor. About a month ago, with tensions mounting at the automaker, board members reached out to several executive search firms to work on a formal process for finding the company’s next chief executive, according to people familiar with the discussions. Around that time, Tesla’s board met with Musk and told him he needed to spend more time on the company. And he needed to say so publicly.
Selling nearly half a trillion dollars in goods and services every three months makes it awfully hard to hide from the global economy’s turbulence. It also provides a lot of cover. The five biggest U.S. tech companies saw revenue grow in the first quarter, which preceded most tariffs. Apple and Amazon are most exposed to tariffs, but even they have many levers they can pull to ease the pain.
