Axios Closer

April 11, 2025
Friday 😫. It's Pete here, filling in for Nathan to close out what's been a crazy week.
Today's newsletter is 572 words, a 2-minute read.
🔔 The dashboard: The S&P 500 closed up 1.8%. The index bounced back from last week's slide to post its best week since 2023. It remains off nearly 9% on the year.
- Biggest gainer? Monolithic Power Systems (+10.0%), the semiconductor company that designs energy-efficient power management chips, continued its volatile run since the April 2 tariff announcement.
- Biggest decliner? Texas Instruments (-5.7%), a global semiconductor company known for its analog and embedded processing chips, on the U.S.-China trade tensions.
1 big thing: Wall Street execs sound warnings
As the U.S. heads into earnings season, Wall Street executives sounded notes of caution Friday over an economy gummed up by economic uncertainty.
- Why it matters: Between sliding consumer sentiment and forecasts of slowing economic growth, the latest comments from Big Bank earnings calls add to the emerging picture of an economy on edge.
State of play: Businesses are consumed with how to react to tariff impacts, distracting them from larger strategic priorities, JPMorgan CFO Jeremy Barnum said on the company's call Friday.
- Small businesses seem especially challenged, he said. And the scale of the tariff impact is varying widely by sector.
What they're saying: "It's hard [for businesses] to make long term decisions right now. And so we'll see how that plays out," Barnum said.
- "Is it bumpier for some clients? Of course, it is," Morgan Stanley CEO Ted Pick said on the firm's own call Friday morning. "We have to see how they respond to that over the course of the weeks and months to come."
The big picture: "A lot of people are not doing things because of this," JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon noted, citing anecdotal conversations with clients.
- "They're going to wait and see. And that's M&A, M&A with middle market companies. That's people's hiring plans."
What we're watching: The uncertainties banks are hearing from their corporate clients are likely to translate into a frenetic earnings season, Dimon said.
2. Confidence plunge


U.S. consumer confidence plunged for the fourth consecutive month in early April, the University of Michigan said today.
- Consumers fear inflation will skyrocket and the economy will weaken, expectations that economists say could be self-fulfilling, Axios' Courtenay Brown writes.
3. Bond shock
"[U]nless your career began before 1981, you just lived through the worst week you've ever seen in terms of the jump in 10-year yields."— Matthew Graham, chief operating officer at Mortgage News Daily
By the numbers: The yield on 10-year Treasuries has jumped more than 50 basis points this week, the steepest one-week rise in more than two decades, per WSJ.
- It stands today at 4.49%.
The impact: The average rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage — which is tied to the 10-year Treasuries, surged to 7.1% today, per Mortgage News Daily.
Go deeper: The warning from the world's largest and most powerful financial market
4. What else is happening
🚗 Mitsubishi, the Japanese automaker, has stopped shipping cars to its U.S. dealers and is holding imports at U.S. ports while it awaits clarity on tariffs. (Automotive News)
🚐 General Motors is cutting production of its all-electric BrightDrop delivery vans at a plant in Canada and will idle the facility through much of 2025. The company said the decisions are related to market demand, and not tariffs. (CNBC)
5. Perfect timing: A tool for tariffs
Optilogic, a supply chain software provider, is launching a tariff optimization platform after raising a $40 million Series B round this week, CEO Don Hicks tells Axios Pro exclusively.
The intrigue: The funding round closed right before President Trump's latest tariff policy shift.
- "Let's just say it wasn't an accident," Hicks says.
How it works: The company's Cosmic Frog software provides modeling that lets customers design their supply chains to navigate tariffs and other disruptions.
- Its new tariff tool, the Lumina Tariff Optimizer, specifically plans for complex scenarios as shipments move into and out of various tariff zones.
Who's using it? Customers include General Motors, Coca-Cola, Whirlpool and Nordstrom.
Colin Campbell covers supply chain deals for Axios Pro.
Today's newsletter was edited by Pete Gannon and copy edited by Carlos Cunha.
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