Comment investir durant une récession du marché – Tarifs 2025

Le calme avant la chute

First, I want to delve a little into what happened in the stock market these last few months. I rarely do that, but it is a good occasion. I will take the S&P500 index as an example since it is the most used index, and it represents a massive portion of the world stock market. Of course, this will be a personal interpretation of what happened.

Trump was elected on November 5, 2024. The market first reacted positively until early December 2024. At this point, the stock market started to plateau. From early December 2024 to mid-February 2025, the market was apparently waiting for what Trump would do.

When we consider that Trump announced that the stock market would reach new all-time highs with him in power, the goal was not really achieved with this plateau.

The first drop

Then, from February 19th 2025 to March 13th, the market dropped significantly. Since the market lost 10% from its previous all-time high, this qualifies as a correction (a 20% drop would be considered a bear market).

2025 tariffs and market downturn

After this first drop, the market slowly rebounded on an optimistic note, maybe people thought the trade war would not happen.

But the market was wrong, and Trump delivered the biggest set of tariffs ever implemented on April 2nd. These tariffs were based on complex estimations of the trade deficits between countries and added a baseline 10% to each country and then significant tariffs on top of that for many countries. The 10% baseline was set to be applied starting April 5th and the additional tariffs on April 9th. Even Switzerland got an additional 31% tariff.

Trump called this day, Liberation Day, because he feels these tariffs will liberate the United States from trade injustice. Trump declared it would help American industry by renewing local production. However, the stock market did not perceive it as such and reacted very negatively by dropping more than 10% in a few days. The market entered correction territory.

Tariffs pause and market reaction

Finally, the last significant event was Trump announcing a 90-day pause in the tariffs on April 9th. At this point, the stock market rebounded significantly. After this, there were some more exemptions and small announcements. There was also some retaliation, mostly from China. It is very difficult to know what will happen with these tariffs, the situation remains highly unpredictable.

The market gained almost 20% until May 19th 2025. At this point, it started dropping again because Trump announced new potential tariffs against Apple and the EU. So, even though it rebounded quickly, it has not yet recovered to its all-time high.

It is ironic to note that Trump announced the stock market would reach new all-time highs if he was in power. In practice, this did not happen, and we are actually seeing worse performance on the stock market than before.

The main issue with the current situation is the lack of predictability. Businesses can probably handle tariffs (by passing them to customers), but businesses have a harder time handling the volatility and the uncertainty. If their products can be taxed at different rates each day, they do not know how to price them. And in some cases, the scale of the tariffs is very significant.

What should we do now?

With the market in such a state of turmoil, investors are left wondering how to respond. So, this leads us to the questions from investors. This is probably not what you want to hear, but the best we can do as investors is to do nothing.

Significant market events like this will always happen in the lifetime of an investor. They are normal. They are always slightly different, so it is impossible to know when they will happen in advance or what will happen afterwards. But what we know is that these events will happen again in the future.

The best we can do is to try to ignore the noise and keep investing as we were. This is what I am doing, and I have not changed my strategy a bit and I keep investing monthly as I have been doing for multiple years now.

And the worst we can do is sell and try to time the market. If you have spare cash (for instance, in an opportunity fund), it could make sense to attempt to buy more (buy the dip). But otherwise, selling and attempting to buy cheaper later is almost always a losing game.

For long-term passive investors, the motto should always be: stay the course

Lessons from the past downturns

These market downturns, corrections and recessions are nothing new. They have been happening on the stock for more than 150 years. We can look at some recent events to see what happened.

The most interesting event is the 2018 trade war. In 2018, Trump in his first presidency announced some tariffs on steel and aluminum and some extra tariffs on Chinese goods. This escalated between China and the US. For multiple months, the market remained flat. And then, from October to December, the market hit a low of almost 20% below highs. Less than five months later, the market had fully recovered already. So, we can see that despite a trade war, the markets recovered.

Plus récemment encore, le COVID-19 a provoqué un krach majeur sur le marché boursier, de plus de 30% en quelques semaines. Cela était logique étant donné que la majeure partie de l’économie mondiale était paralysée, aux alentours de mars 2020. Néanmoins, le marché boursier s’est rétabli dès août 2020. Il s’agissait de l’un des marchés baissiers les plus rapides de l’histoire. Cela peut être observé sur le graphique ci-dessus.

Une fois de plus, le marché boursier s’est effondré en 2022 de plus de 20%. Cette fois-ci, il a fallu presque deux ans pour se rétablir. Cette baisse du marché boursier était due à l’inflation élevée et aux craintes d’une récession. Le rétablissement a pris du temps car il n’y avait pas de facteurs majeurs favorisant la reprise.

Nous pouvons constater que chaque baisse était légèrement différente :

• La cause de la baisse était différente
• Le rétablissement n’a pas pris le même temps
• La vitesse de la chute et du rétablissement est différente

Cependant, ce qui n’est pas différent, c’est que le marché s’est rétabli. Par conséquent, dans les trois cas, les investisseurs qui ont vendu ont principalement subi des pertes. D’autre part, les investisseurs qui ont continué à investir ont réalisé une bonne affaire et leur portefeuille s’est rétabli.

Alors, que pouvons-nous apprendre du passé :

• Les baisses du marché se produisent toujours
• Le marché se rétablit toujours
• Il est impossible de prévoir le marché
• Chaque événement est toujours légèrement différent

Par conséquent, ne rien faire et résister aux périodes difficiles est notre meilleure stratégie.

FAQ

Réflexions finales pour les investisseurs passifs

Les baisses du marché ne sont pas idéales pour les investisseurs passifs. Nous préférerions ne pas les traverser. Et c’est particulièrement vrai lorsqu’une seule personne provoque la baisse. Mais les baisses du marché boursier sont inévitables.

Alors, cette baisse du marché boursier est-elle différente ? Cette baisse est quelque peu unique, mais pas sans précédent. Si nous apprenons quelque chose de l’histoire, c’est que chaque événement boursier est différent, mais le marché s’est toujours rétabli. Une nouvelle baisse n’est pas suffisamment différente pour nous inquiéter.

Par conséquent, le mieux que nous puissions faire est d’ignorer le bruit, de continuer à investir et de garder les yeux fixés sur l’horizon à long terme. Bien sûr, il est tentant d’essayer de faire quelque chose. Cependant, parfois, la meilleure action que nous puissions entreprendre est simplement de rester constants et de ne rien faire.

Il y aura probablement d’autres turbulences lorsque la pause actuelle des tarifs douaniers prendra fin et que la guerre commerciale se poursuivra. Ou bien, la guerre commerciale pourrait s’arrêter complètement et nous pourrions assister à un rétablissement rapide. Il n’y a aucun moyen de le savoir, donc encore une fois, nous devrions maintenir le cap.

Si vous n’êtes pas sûr de votre allocation d’actifs, vous devriez prendre le temps de revoir votre allocation d’actifs et vous assurer qu’elle correspond à vos objectifs. Ou, si vous n’investissez pas encore et souhaitez profiter du marché, vous pouvez lire notre guide sur l’investissement en Suisse.

Et vous ? Que pensez-vous de cette baisse du marché boursier ?