Every once in a while, the stock market breaks out in volatility pockets due to the birth and run of news cycles, as it is an inevitable fact of financial markets as a whole. What is also inevitable and natural is for the phases of these developments to go through a cycle, where new pivots and headlines start to exhaust the whipsaws caused by introducing new information to sway the outlooks being priced into asset prices.
This week, the second trading week of April 2025, President Trump swiftly pivoted his view to an exemption for some of the products previously tariffed from China’s exports.
This exemption focused mostly on consumer electronics, including some of the exports the United States brings in the most from China. While this decreases the risk of bottlenecks in supply chains and potentially higher costs for the most significant technology stocks, nothing is certain yet.
Of course, the news will help to create some relief for stocks like Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL), the main carrier and seller of smartphones and laptops in the United States and other markets. The benefits can also spill over to a name like HP Inc. (NYSE: HPQ), another major player whose supply chain is also exposed to Chinese exports. When it comes to NVIDIA Co. (NASDAQ: NVDA), the story gets a bit more complicated, though it is still good.
Apple’s Status Is Unchanged
[content-module:CompanyOverview|NASDAQ: AAPL]Even with political goals to be achieved in the United States, whose ultimate goal is to bring manufacturing activity and trade balances back to a favorable state, there is no way or scenario where a company as important as Apple gets left behind in the dust of conflicts and trade policies.
Representing such a large share of consumer spending every year and brand loyalty, if not all-out market share dominance, Apple has the moat that value investors like to look for whenever they buy a company for the long haul. After rebounding by as much as 6.1% over the past week, it looks like the market may be thinking along the same lines when it comes to Apple’s future.
This short-term momentum means a lot more than it seems on the surface, as Apple stock is approaching a major technical level now that it trades at 78% of its 52-week high. Wall Street’s definition of a bear market is a 20% decline or more from recent highs, meaning that Apple is on the brink of coming back into a neutral, if not bullish, path now.
That breakthrough would allow the market to express its forward-looking assumption that tariff dealings are starting to become clearer and uncertainties might be fading away. This sentiment led analysts from Citigroup to reiterate a Buy rating on Apple stock and, this time, keep a $245 per share price target on the company to call for as much as 21.2% additional upside potential from where it trades today.
HP Carries More Upside Potential
[content-module:CompanyOverview|NYSE: HPQ]Like Apple, HP carries most of its operations in China’s manufacturing ecosystem, making it dependent to the point where trade tariffs would have significantly hurt the supply chain of personal computers and other electronics that the company makes for the United States.
That being said, it looks like the company might now be in the clear moving forward, justifying today’s sentiment from Wall Street analysts. They have landed on a consensus price target of $35.09 per share and call for a net upside of as much as 47.9% from where it trades today.
Being smaller in market share and financial prowess than Apple had its own effect on HP stock’s price action, as it has fallen to 60% of its 52-week high, but that only makes the risk-to-reward setup in the stock a lot more attractive for those looking to buy the tariff scare dips.
NVIDIA’s Spring Is loading
[content-module:CompanyOverview|NASDAQ: NVDA]For now, it looks like the resolution of the Chinese trade negotiations is centered on semiconductor bans and limitations, which significantly affect NVIDIA's future. Despite the stock rebounding from these exemptions, President Trump has now banned NVIDIA from selling H20 chips to China, a recent shift in policy.
This shift comes in response to China’s retaliation over rejected trade terms. However, investors might view this stance as temporary, considering China's potential risk of further retaliating—possibly targeting Apple’s regional operations. This could impact shipments from the U.S., especially as it rolls out a supply chain involving HP factories.
Even with this recent volatility and uncertainty, it looks like bearish traders don’t see a scenario moving forward where NVIDIA stock is trading much lower, which is why investors can see a 9.2% decline in short interest over the past month alone, a clear sign of bearish capitulation knowing that these short-term whipsaws lower are likely to be short-lived.
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