March retrospective: Trump continues to set the tone, and not in a positive way

March 2025: Trump continues to set the tone, and not in a positive way

In March, stock markets around the world yielded sharply, with U.S. equities again the biggest laggard. Meanwhile, interest rates on European government bonds rose.

Financial markets remained under the spell of the dynamic duo of Trump and Musk in March, and not in a positive sense. Uncertainty about U.S. economic policy, and more specifically the threat of a trade war, continued to hang over the global economy and international financial markets like a sword of Damocles. As in February, this also mainly affected U.S. equities in March, this time with a negative monthly return of as much as 9.6% for the MSCI North America index. Unlike in February, other equity regions did not manage to escape the malaise in March. In February, European equities and emerging markets still delivered positive monthly returns, but in March both regions yielded 4% and 3.5%, respectively. Asian stock markets were already at slight losses in February, but fell by another 4.3% in March. Compared to a year ago, virtually nothing remains now of the strong U.S. “outperformance” against other equity regions. All equity regions have delivered net returns between 5% and 8% over the past 12 months.

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