• The Dow Jones fell over three-quarters of a percent on Friday.
• Stocks are paring back recent election-fueled gains.
• US Retail Sales beat forecasts, but still grew by a smaller amount in October.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) trimmed it’s recent bull run, declining over 350 points and giving back roughly 0.85% as investors grapple with an increasingly uncertain future. US Retail Sales beat expectations but still eased back from previous figures, and Federal Reserve (Fed) Chair Jerome Powell splashed cold water on rate-cut-hungry investors this week when he reaffirmed that the Fed wasn’t “in a hurry” to cut interest rates further.

The post-election “Trump rally” is set to continue unwinding as the Trump campaign begins to leak potential candidates for key official positions that former President Donald Trump intends to install at the beginning of his second term in January. Pharmaceutical stocks took an unexpected hit on Friday after Trump’s team announced their plans to nominate vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to the head of the US Department of Health and Human Services. RFK Jr. has openly discussed his plans to ban several vaccines and other health products outright, a surprisingly hyper-regulatory move that flies in the face of the broader market’s initial exuberance at a Trump election win which was meant to carry further deregulation efforts to the public marketplace.