US equity markets climbed off the mat, recovering from steep morning losses to close sharply higher as trade war fears receded after the Trump administration indicated it's willing to negotiate with China on escalating frictions between the world's two biggest economies - Dow up +231-points or +0.96%, recovering from an intra-session low that the saw the index down as much as -510-points or -2.1% (the index's biggest intra-day turnaround from a low since 6 February). The broader S&P500 gained +1.16% to log its first back-to-back gain since a two-day stretch ending on 9 March. To put some context around the recent bout of market volatility, thus far this year the S&P500 has had three times as many sessions with a 1% move (i.e. 13 days with a 1% rise and 12 with a 1% drop, making for a total of 25) than in all of 2017 (where there were just 8 such sessions). The technology-centric NASDAQ jumped +1.45% after trading into official correction territory (i.e. a 10% drop from a closing peak). Facebook Inc. fell 0.7% after lawmakers said Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Mark Zuckerberg would testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on April 11 about the company’s use and protection of user data. Facebook recovered more than >3% in after hours trading following a question-and-answer conference call between reporters and Mr Zuckerberg after the company admitted that up to 87M users could have been affected by an information leak to data firm Cambridge Analytica. Music streaming company Spotify Technology SA fell -3.2% on its second day of trading on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). The broader markets were initially under heavy selling pressure - notably shares of manufacturers and machinery companies - after China unveiled plans for a series of retaliatory tariffs on American goods including airplanes, autos and soybeans, covering 106 categories of products. China's announcement came came shortly after the Trump administration unveiled plans to impose tariffs of 25% on Chinese products worth $50 billion in addition to the levies introduced on steel and aluminum last month. Separately, US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross observed that that the "$50B" in tariffs that China are talking about "amounts to about 3/10 of a percent of (US) gross domestic product, so its hardly a life threatening activity.".
