Tariffs tanked the stock market. Did investors panic and sell? Here's the data.

Daniel de Visé, USA TODAY

Tue, Apr 15, 2025, 2:03 AM 5 min read

When the stock market goes haywire, the natural impulse might be to panic and sell.

In early April, the stock market actually did go haywire. For analysts at Vanguard, the investment firm, the roller-coaster ride provided a timely opportunity to study how investors behave when the going gets tough.

As it turns out, most investors passed the test.

Vanguard tracked the behavior of its “self-directed” clients, the ones who make their own decisions about moving money in and out of the market, between April 3 and 9. Here’s what their analysis found:

• Only 8.4% of investors executed trades on any of those days, reacting to the volatile market by buying or selling stocks.

• Most investors who made trades did so on only one of the five trading days.

• Of the investors who made trades, buyers outnumbered sellers nearly 5 to 1. In other words, few investors resorted to panic-selling.

“The headline is, the vast majority of our self-directed investors stayed the course,” said James Martielli, head of investment and trading services at Vanguard.

To Martielli, the data shows everyday investors rode out a turbulent stock market in relative calm, following the cardinal rules of investing: Buy stocks when prices are low, and sell when they’re high. Don’t make impulsive moves. Stick to the plan.

“The good news is, we did not see a lot of folks across our very wide investor base ‘sell out,’” he said.

There was plenty reason to panic in the early days of April. To recap:

• On Wednesday, April 2, President Trump announced sweeping tariffs on all countries.

• In response, on April 3, the Dow Jones Industrial Average shed nearly 1,700 points. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq had their worst day since 2020.

• On Friday, April 4, China announced retaliatory tariffs. The Dow lost another 2,200 points. The Nasdaq descended into a bear market.

• On Monday, April 7, Trump doubled down on tariffs. Stocks closed mostly lower. The market slid further on April 8.

• On Wednesday, April 9, Trump paused most of his tariff campaign, partly in response to reeling markets. Traders exhaled, and all three major stock indices marked huge gains.

On April 3, the first day of big market losses, the investment firm Schwab logged a busy day of trading. But most investors did not panic-sell.

“We saw more self-directed investors be proactive, rather than reactive,” said Patrick Means, vice president and branch manager at a Schwab branch in Dallas.

On the whole, Schwab investors did more buying than selling in the week of April 3, said Alex Coffey, senior trading and derivatives strategist.