Wall Street on fire: Trump got a reality check when US Treasury Chief flew in

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent staged a high-level emergency intervention with President Donald Trump in Florida. He went on a mission to stop the stock market and digital assets industry from spiraling and printing massive red indexes. He urged Trump to focus his tariff messaging on winning trade deals.

The meeting’s effect can be directly seen as the global financial markets rebounded. The crypto market cap jumped by around 4% to regain the crucial $2.5 trillion mark over the last day. Its 24-hour trading volume remained above $153 billion. However, European stocks made broad gains as the Stoxx 600 jumped 1.3%.

US Treasury Chief Bessent intervenes mid-crisis

According to reports, Treasury Secretary Bessent’s message to Trump was that “Markets will keep melting unless you start talking deals, not just tariffs.” This implies that America needs less of “Liberation Day” and more of “Let’s Make a Deal.”

The backchannel conversation happened as markets spiraled after over 50 countries were hit by the US tariff attack.

The report highlights that the meeting was an opportunity to figure out the next steps and to reach out for open discussions. It added that one of Trump’s purposes for rolling out tariffs was to build maximum leverage over foreign governments.

While Trump’s been chest-thumping about a long and painful trade war, Wall Street was sweating bullets. The contradiction between his fire-and-fury messaging and quiet negotiations is giving markets serious whiplash.

This can be seen within the administration. On Monday morning, Bessent announces negotiations with Japan. Meanwhile, Trump’s trade czar Peter Navarro drops a Financial Times op-ed saying, “no negotiations.” Just when it looked like diplomacy was making a comeback, Trump turned around and threatened a 104% tariff on China.

Bessent looked like he wanted Trump to pivot the message from all talks about tariffs to how they lead to better deals and more jobs.

Wall Street’s having a meme coin moment

After a whiplash Monday that saw stocks ricochet like meme coins, US futures rose post-close but with a burst of false hop. Headlines saying Trump might pause tariffs for 90 days led the trading markets to rally. 

Dow, S&P 500, and Nasdaq-100 futures jumped over 1% after a tough trading day that saw the S&P surge 7% intraday before closing basically flat. The digital assets market saw Bitcoin and major altcoins adding gains in the sentiment of extreme fear.

Investors are craving stability like it’s 2020 all over again. But this time, the Fed isn’t riding in with QE fireworks as it’s just tariffs, tweets, and terminal vibes.

Bitcoin price surged 3% in the last 24 hours, hovering around $79K. Its 24-hour trading volume dipped 4% to $67 billion. The biggest altcoin, Ether recorded a surge of over 5% at the same time while XRP and Solana jumped by 6% and 8%, respectively.

Coinglass data shows that more than 117K traders got liquidated over the last day. The cumulative futures liquidation went on to breach $450 million. This comes in when Monday saw massive $1.3 billion of liquidated future bets.

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