After Wall Street’s worst selloff since the 2025 tariff shock, here’s what investors need to watch next

Wall Street has experienced its steepest selloff since the tariff shock of 2025, according to a MarketWatch analysis that frames the sell-off as a catalyst for reassessing near-term risks. The transmission mechanism runs primarily through risk appetite and earnings expectations: tariff escalation raises input costs and compresses margins for import-dependent firms, while the uncertainty it introduces widens equity risk premia and pushes investors toward defensive positioning. The S&P 500 is the most directly exposed benchmark, with the largest sensitivity likely concentrated in consumer discretionary, industrials, and semiconductor names with extended global supply chains. Traders should watch the next scheduled CPI release and any official trade-policy announcements, since inflation prints will determine whether the Federal Reserve sees tariff-driven price pressure as transitory or persistent, which in turn shapes rate expectations and equity valuations.

HIGH-impact news is typically a market-moving event with multi-pip or multi-percent intraday reactions. Examples include central bank rate decisions, major CPI/NFP releases, geopolitical shocks, mega-cap earnings beats/misses, and regulatory announcements. Traders typically position-reduce or hedge ahead of scheduled HIGH-impact events, and follow the wire in real time to react to unscheduled ones (war headlines, central-bank emergency statements, surprise corporate actions). The Trading News Terminal squawk box reads every HIGH-impact headline aloud the moment it hits the wire — so active traders don't have to stare at the feed.

Active traders typically follow a three-step workflow when a market-moving headline hits the wire: (1) read the headline on the terminal or hear it on the squawk box; (2) assess whether the news is already priced in (by checking intraday price action in the seconds before) or whether it's genuinely new information; (3) act — either entering a breakout position, fading an overreaction, or tightening stops on existing trades. Trading News Terminal's Pro plan delivers wire-grade headlines within seconds of the source, with automatic audio squawk on every HIGH-impact event, so the read-assess-act cycle never waits on a refresh button.