A trader works on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange on Monday. Seth Wenig/Associated Press

The stocks of publicly traded companies based in or with a strong presence in Maine were down far less than the national average after President Donald Trump’s raft of tariffs triggered a third consecutive day of losses on Wall Street.

The Chicago Board Options Exchange’s Volatility Index hit 50 on Monday, reaching what economists consider an extreme level as the bloodbath on Wall Street continues into a second week. On April 2, the CBOE index stood at 20.94.

Bitcoin is down sharply, oil is down and international stock indices are down sharply again.

There are very few publicly traded stocks that remain unaffected by the tariff frenzy that has infected the New York Stock Exchange, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, Nasdaq Composite, and the Standard and Poor’s 500, which are considered the three main indices.

The S&P 500 dropped 10% in two days, while Nasdaq moved into bear market territory in the one of the worst weeks for stocks since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

Husson University’s College of Business tracks and analyzes the stocks of 25 companies that are considered to affect the Maine economy. These companies are either based in Maine or have an influence on the Maine economy through employment or consumer spending and are among the state’s top employers. The list is adjusted as a company’s influence on Maine’s economy changes.

Jia Liu is an associate professor of finance at Husson’s School of Business and Management and oversees the project tracking Maine’s stock index. In an interview Monday, Liu pointed out that while the S&P 500 is down 10% and the Dow Jones is down 8% since last week, the Husson Stock Index is down slightly less, at about 7%.

Liu explained why: “We do have some companies like Walmart and McDonald’s in the stock index. Their products are considered a necessity, so they are usually affected by the bad economy less than other industries, such as banking and technology.”

There are seven Maine-based companies on the HSI. They are Bar Harbor Bank, Camden National Corporation, Colgate-Palmolive, The First Bancorp Inc., ImmuCell Corporation, Idexx Laboratories Inc. and Northeast Bank.

Bank stocks were particularly hard-hit, Liu said, down 15% to 20%. Technology stocks like Apple are down 10% or more. The stocks of companies like Home Depot and Lowe’s, which are both on the Husson Stock Index, are down 3.99% and 2.46%, respectively.

“When the economy is doing bad, they actually get affected negatively less,” Liu explained. “And when the economy is doing great, they probably are not rising as much as other industries, like banking.”

Yet the Maine bank stocks on the HSI are faring much better — down between 2.16% for Bar Harbor Bank to a high of 7.3% for the Camden National Corporation. Liu said that’s because these institutions are serving local customers, businesses and municipalities who are generally not involved in exports and imports that are affected by the tariffs.

“I believe even in the longer term, the Maine economy will probably be hit less than the national average, because our economy is not heavily dependent on exports and imports,” Liu predicted.

She acknowledges that Maine buys a lot of heating oil, gasoline and electricity from Canada but points out those commodities are facing lower tariffs of only 10% for now.

Liu sees two ways the markets will resolve the volatility and losses. “The (Trump) administration will back down and will end all this, and then (the) stock market will get rebounded. The other solution is probably the Federal Reserve will step in if the administration is not going to back down, for the central bank to step in and help the economy.”

The latter seems to be off the table for now, as Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said Friday that he’s in no hurry to cut interest rates — at least until the central bank can get a clearer reading on where the economy is heading.