Here’s what you’ll find in today’s edition:

• It’s quarterly review time. Markets may need a performance improvement plan. 

• Larry Fink’s latest thoughts on bitcoin and tokenization.

• Major economic events are coming later in the week. Here’s what we’re watching.

A Q1 market review 

In a fitting end to a rocky first quarter, US stocks fell back into correction territory Monday. 

The S&P 500 was trading 0.2% lower at 2 pm ET, putting it around 4.8% in the red since the start of 2025. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite is slated to close out Q1 almost 12% lower. 

It’s the worst first quarter performance for the Nasdaq Composite since 2020. 

One silver lining in Q1: gold. The precious metal is about to notch its best-performing quarter since 1986. Analysts attribute the rally to the Trump tariff-induced trade war. More on that later. 

Digital gold, though, is a different story. Bitcoin is slated to close out its worst Q1 since 2018. The narrative of bitcoin as a safe-haven asset apparently has not taken.

Looking ahead, things could get worse before they get better. 

Tariffs are set to remain a dominant market narrative in Q2. President Trump is slated to announce his global tariff plans on Wednesday, which he’s dubbed “Liberation Day.”

To Team Trump, April 2 will mark a turning point for domestic manufacturing. To some analysts, “Liberation Day” could also bring salvation to US equity prices (at least in the short term). 

The logic goes: If Trump announces a comprehensive reciprocal tariff regime, investors will gain clarity. Hopefully the daily headlines will slow down and markets can stop wondering whether a levy will be delayed or amended. Concrete answers on the tariff front leave investors free to focus on impacts of other Trump administration economic policies, like tax cuts. 

In the long term, I’m less optimistic. Even Trump’s closest Cabinet members reportedly aren’t fully up to speed on what the president will say on Wednesday, so I’d imagine markets will also be shocked. If the announcements lead to a significant escalation in the trade war, any “clarity” bump will quickly be reversed.

I’d also argue that these reciprocal tariffs are not priced in, so expect some short-term volatility later in the week as investors digest the announcements from the White House. 

OK, I’m putting the crystal ball down now. Keep an eye on your inbox later this week to see how my predictions hold up.

— Casey Wagner

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The size of Strategy’s latest bitcoin buy, as the company last week spent another $1.92 billion on the asset. 

Strategy’s year-to-date bitcoin yield — the change in the ratio of its bitcoin holdings to its assumed diluted shares outstanding — is 11%.

The company now holds 528,185 BTC, acquired for an average price of $67,458 per coin. 

The word bitcoin appeared once in BlackRock CEO Larry Fink’s 2024 letter to investors. The asset (and tokenization too) got a bigger shoutout this time around.

Fink’s sole mention of BTC last March came when bringing up BlackRock’s recent bitcoin ETF launch. That was part of a broader effort to “bring better liquidity and price discovery to more opaque markets,” he wrote.

The CEO’s 2025 letter, published today, included seven “bitcoin” references. He again addressed the aforementioned IBIT product, which has notched net inflows of $40 billion to date.

More than half of that demand has been from retail investors, Fink noted, with three-quarters of those investors never owning an iShares product before.

But more interestingly, Fink wrote there’s no guarantee that the dollar will forever serve as the world’s reserve currency.  

“If the US doesn’t get its debt under control, if deficits keep ballooning, America risks losing that position to digital assets like Bitcoin,” he explained.

He added: “Decentralized finance is an extraordinary innovation. It makes markets faster, cheaper and more transparent. Yet that same innovation could undermine America's economic advantage if investors begin seeing bitcoin as a safer bet than the dollar.”

Fink gives this warning while clarifying that he’s “obviously not anti-digital assets.” He has, after all, called tokenized securities “the next generation for markets.” And we’ve reported on BlackRock’s tokenized money market fund, which earlier this month hit $1 billion in AUM.

Fink reaffirmed this sentiment, arguing that tokenizing every stock, bond and fund would “revolutionize” investing.

“Markets wouldn't need to close,” Fink wrote. “Transactions that currently take days would clear in seconds. And billions of dollars currently immobilized by settlement delays could be reinvested immediately back into the economy, generating more growth.”

Solving for digital verification will be critical if tokenized funds are to become as familiar to investors as ETFs, he added. A TradFi giant like BlackRock continuing to focus on these categories should no doubt make such a thing possible. 

— Ben Strack

Happy Monday! Possible market-moving announcements and reports are set to come later this week. 

Here’s what’s on tap: 

• As mentioned above, Wednesday is “Liberation Day.” President Trump is expected to announce reciprocal tariff plans from the Rose Garden alongside Cabinet members. Markets are hoping Trump will provide some clarity. But it’s possible that any new policies are short-lived if the White House cuts deals with other countries or delays the start date for tariffs (as we’ve seen in the past). Once again, expect volatility in markets, even if consumer prices are not immediately impacted. 

• The US employment report for March will be released on Friday. The data will help us better understand labor market conditions. Analysts are expecting the unemployment rate to remain unchanged at 4.1%. The economy is projected to have added 140,000 jobs in March, which would be a decline from February's 151,000 new positions. 

• Fed Chair Jerome Powell is slated to speak on Friday after the labor report is released. Given his recent “transitory” remarks at the last FOMC press conference, we will be listening for any further comments on whether or not he feels the central bank needs to step in sooner than they had expected. He’s been careful in the past not to comment directly on Trump’s tariff policies, but we’ll be listening for anything on that front as well.

— Casey Wagner

• Stablecoin issuer Circle is working with JPMorgan Chase and Citi to potentially file IPO-related paperwork as soon as next month, Fortune reported. In case you missed it, here’s our piece about a possible upcoming crypto IPO boom.

• Bitcoin miner Hut 8 has gained a majority interest in American Bitcoin Corp. — a company co-founded by Eric Trump that focuses on industrial-scale bitcoin mining and strategic bitcoin reserve development. 

• Crypto investment products saw net inflows of $226 million last week, CoinShares data shows. But outflows came on Friday as core inflation ticked up, “implying the US Federal Reserve is likely to remain hawkish despite recent data alluding to weak growth,” CoinShares’ James Butterfill said.