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The Fed's 2025 pattern: a long hold, then cuts resume

Through the first half of 2025 the Federal Reserve held policy steady, repeatedly citing uncertainty over how new tariffs would affect inflation. In the autumn of 2025 it judged labour-market cooling the greater risk and resumed cutting rates in quarter-point steps.

US–China 2025: tit-for-tat escalation, then a truce

In spring 2025, US and Chinese tariffs on each other's goods escalated in rapid tit-for-tat rounds to triple-digit percentage levels that both sides acknowledged were close to a trade embargo. In May 2025, talks in Geneva produced a temporary truce that lowered rates substantially for a negotiating window, easing the most acute phase.

April 2025: sweeping US tariffs and the sharpest selloff of the year

On 2 April 2025 the US administration announced sweeping "reciprocal" tariffs covering most trading partners, at rates far above prior expectations. Global equities fell hard over the following sessions, and roughly a week later the administration announced a 90-day pause on the higher country-specific rates, after which equities staged one of their strongest single-day rallies in years.

The DeepSeek shock: AI capex assumptions get repriced

On 27 January 2025, claims that Chinese startup DeepSeek had trained a competitive AI model at a fraction of assumed cost triggered a broad repricing of AI-infrastructure stocks. NVIDIA fell roughly 17% in one session — the largest single-day market-value loss for any company up to that point — and AI-linked names fell across the board.

December 2024: the Fed cuts but signals a slower path

At its December 2024 meeting the Federal Reserve cut rates by a quarter point but paired the move with projections indicating fewer cuts in 2025 than markets had hoped, alongside language emphasising bumpier inflation progress.

Bitcoin trades above $100,000 for the first time

In early December 2024 bitcoin traded above $100,000 for the first time, a round-number milestone reached in the weeks after the US election amid expectations of a friendlier US regulatory stance and continued ETF inflows.