It has been a rough 2025 for U.S. investors. The last full week of April saw a cheerful 4.6% gain for the week in the S&P 500, but that top stock index remains down 6% so far for the year. The “Trump Bump” that was seen after the election and the start of this year has given way to daily tariff news, trade wars, China, international selling of U.S. stocks and bonds, higher interest rates, spending deficits, a $36.2 trillion accumulated deficit, no rate cuts to be seen and a generally weakening economy.

Tactical Bulls wants to see the real state of the major markets for 2025. We have already seen the likes of Barclays, RBC, Goldman Sachs and others cut their S&P 500 price targets for 2025. This cover U.S. stocks and bonds, alternative assets, and foreign stock markets and their bond yields measured by the top ETFs for each sector and theme. In a lot of ways, the market feels a lot worse than the reality may be pointing to at the present moment. And we all know and assume that any major international bargain will be a welcome wagon for those of us who are invested.

U.S. STOCK MARKET INTERNALS

The breadth of the stock market is currently not favorable. The top 4 stocks by market cap (MSFT, AAPL, AMZN, NVDA) have lost more than $1 trillion each on average since the start of the year, but… how bad are things in reality as the S&P 500 is down 6% year-to-date?

Of the S&P 500, there are 181 stocks that are positive YTD. Of the 319 negative performers, 175 of them are down 10% or more YTD.

The antiquated Dow Jones Industrial Average, now dominated by the tech giants, recovered just 2.5% for the week but is down 5.7% YTD. Of those 30 Dow stocks, 12 of the 30 stocks (BA, JPM, VZ, WMT, IBM, V, MMM, JNJ, TRV, AMGN, MCD, KO) are actually positive so far this year… and the top leaders are Coca-Cola +15%, McDonald’s +9% and Amgen +8%.

The NASDAQ-100 recovered with a gain of 6.4% in the last week but the QQQ performance is still down 7.6% YTD. Of the NASDAQ 100, 37 stocks are positive so far in 2025. Of the 62 which are negative performers, 31 of the 100 members are down more than 10% YTD. And every single member of the Magnificent 7 stocks is down more than the market as a whole:

• Meta -6.5%
• Microsoft -7%
• Amazon -14%
• Alphabet -14%
• Apple -16%
• NVIDIA -17%
• Tesla -29%

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And of the much broader Russell 2000 index, which includes many of the small-cap stocks not in the S&P major indexes, there are 1186 of 2000 down 10% more. And only 454 of the 2000 stocks are positive YTD.

ALTERNATIVE ASSETS HAVE THEIR MOMENT

It turns out that gold is the best performing alternative asset of all YTD. Gold briefly hit $3,500 during the peak of panic but ended down about 0.5% for this last week. Still, gold measured by the SPDR Gold Shares ETF (NYSEArca: GLD) is up about 26% YTD and up over 41% from a year ago. The “GLD” is the top alternative ETF of them all with a value of $99.7 billion worth of gold in its custody. Silver is being measured by the iShares Silver Trust (NYSEArca: SLV) and it rose 1.7% in the last week. Silver is up 14% YTD and up 20% from a year ago.

Bitcoin trades 24/7, so a cleaner way of pegging the price without averaging exchange/broker prices is the iShares Bitcoin Trust Beneficial Interest (NASDAQ: IBIT) as the largest spot-Bitcoin ETF. IBIT rose more than 12% in the last week. It is up only 2.3% YTD but is up 43% from a year ago. IBIT currently holds $55.8 billion worth of total Bitcoin holdings – measured as 588,686.91 actual BTC holdings.

BOND YIELDS REMAIN TOO HIGH!

Bonds are currently still showing yields that are too high for the U.S. government to sustain paying the premium interest rates versus the rest of the world.

• 2-year Treasury 3.74% yield
• 10-year-Treasury 4.24% yield
• 30-year Treasury 4.71% yield
• Fed Funds remains stuck at 4.25% to 4.50% until FOMC cuts rates
• Prime Lending rate still 7.50% (primary lending rate for small business loans)
• 30-year mortgage rate 6.87% average
• 48-month new car loan 7.56% average

Now look at international rates for America’s top trading partners and leading nations:

• 10-year China at 1.68% yield
• 10-year Germany 2.47% yield
• 10-year Japan 1.34% yield
• 10-year France 3.20% yield
• 10-year Italy 3.59% yield
• 10-year U.K. 4.48% yield
• 10-year Canada 3.18% yield

ALSO READ: 20 STOCKS WALL STREET SAYS TO BUY RIGHT NOW!!!

BACK TO STOCKS BY SECTOR, VIA ETFs

Here is how the leading ETFs are performing year-to-date by sector, in no particular order:

• $XLC -2.5% (communications services)
• $XLF -0.6% (financials)
• $XLY -11.9% (consumer discretionary)
• $XLK -10.3% (tech/IT)
• $XLU +3.3% (utilities)
• $XLI -2.1% (industrials)
• $KRE -10.6% (regional banks)
• $SOXX -14.2% (semiconductors)
• $GDX +44% (gold miners)
• $XHB -10.4% (homebuilders)
• $XLP +2.8% (consumer staples)
• $XLE -3.8% (energy)
• $XLRE -0.3% (real estate)
• $XLV +0.3% (health care)
• $XLB -1.8% (materials)

MAJOR INTERNATIONAL STOCK MARKET ETFs

It turns out that international markets have been the place to be in 2025. There has been a departure of foreign investors’ holdings in U.S. stocks and bonds, and these markets are generally smaller and will respond with higher prices if the capital that left the U.S. are redeployed into their home markets. Here is how the top international equity ETFs have performed so far in 2025:

• China – $FXI +11.6%
• Japan – $EWJ +5.5%
• Canada – $EWC +4.3%
• Mexico – $EWW +23.7%
• India – $INDA +0.4%
• Europe/50 – $FEZ +17.2%
• Germany – $EWG +23.7%
• U.K. – $EWU +11.9%
• France – $EWQ +14.1%
• Italy – $EWI +22.4%
• Spain – $EWP +31.6%
• Australia – $EWA +2.7%
• Israel – $EIS +0.9%
• Saudi Arabia – $KSA +0.8%
• Turkey – $TUR -10.9%
• Africa/Index – $AFK +14.4%
• Brazil – $EWZ +19.7%