The market sell-off is not over yet as consumer and corporate confidence take a dive on tariff uncertainty, according to Deutsche Bank.

“We see the selloff in US equities as having further to go,” Binky Chadha, chief strategist at Deutsche Bank, wrote Saturday. “With trade policy uncertainty likely to continue to weigh, at least until April 2, we expect positioning to continue to unwind.”

“A move to the bottom of the positioning band which is where it went to in the last trade war, would take the S&P 500 down to 5250,” Chadha added.

The S&P 500 level highlighted by Chadha points to another 6.9% decline from Friday’s close of 5,638.94. The benchmark was last about 8% below the all-time high it reached just last month.

At the center of the strategist’s call are concerns of an economic slowdown amid tariff uncertainty that are unlikely to abate for at least the next several weeks. The latest earnings season showed CEOs are slashing capital expenditures and cutting their earnings forecasts.

Chadha also expects the idea of a “Trump put” — in which the president will ease on his policies that have destabilized the market — will not be realized until a marked turn lower in Trump’s approval ratings.

“Compared to the level of consumer confidence, the current approval rating is high, implying plenty of room for downside with negative growth or inflation developments likely to speed the catch down,” Chadha wrote. “We expect the net approval rating has to turn more significantly negative, at least -5%, before the administration starts to consider responding.”

Still, Chadha — who held one of the more bullish outlooks heading into 2025 — said that it’s “too early to throw in the towel” on his year-end target of 7,000, a move that’s more than 24% higher from Friday’s close. He thinks stocks can bounce back sharply in the latter part of the year if there’s a resolution on tariff uncertainty.

On Monday, at least, the broad index rose slightly as it tries to claw back its recent losses. The move came after the latest U.S. retail sales report showed consumers are still spending though at a slower pace than expected.

“While the risks have grown, for now we maintain our year-end S&P 500 target of 7000,” he said.

Warren Buffett’s love for Japanese stocks grows fonder even as he increasingly sells U.S. equities.

The 94-year-old investor’s Berkshire Hathaway holding company raised its holdings in five Japanese trading houses —  Itochu, Marubeni, Mitsubishi, Mitsui and Sumitomo — by more than 1 percentage point each, to stakes ranging from 8.5% to 9.8%, according to a regulatory filing.

The “Oracle of Omaha” said in his 2024 annual letter that Berkshire is committed to its Japanese investments for the long term and has reached an agreement with the companies to go beyond an initial 10% ceiling.

All five are the biggest “sogo shosha,” or trading houses, in Japan that invest across diverse sectors domestically and abroad — “in a manner somewhat similar to Berkshire itself,” Buffett said. Berkshire first bought into the companies in the summer of 2019. 

Part of the investment strategy involves Buffett hedging currency risk by selling Japanese debt and then pocketing the difference between dividends from the investments and the bond coupon payments he has to make to service the debt.

At the end of 2024, the market value of Berkshire’s Japanese holdings came to $23.5 billion, at an aggregate cost of $13.8 billion. The investor praised the companies’ managements, relationships with their investors and their capital deployment strategies. 

Buffett first unveiled the Japanese positionsd on his 90th birthday in August 2020 after making regular purchases on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, saying he was “confounded” by the opportunity and was attracted to the trading houses’ dividend growth.

In 2023, Buffett even paid a visit to Japan with his designated successor Greg Abel and met with the heads of the Japanese firms. He said he’d like Berkshire to own the companies forever.

The student of famed investor Benjamin Graham has been aggressively selling U.S. stocks and growing his record cash pile to $334 billion. Berkshire sold more than $134 billion worth of stocks in 2024, largely by shrinking the size of Berkshire’s two largest equity holdings — Apple and Bank of America.