<a href="https://archive.ph/3GTsu" rel="nofollow">https://archive.ph/3GTsu</a><p>wild that we wouldn't be here if folks had taken the talking points seriously, but because they could be brushed aside as bombast, they came to pass.
The markets, while often right after a while, can be a bit slow. I remember the weeks in February/March 2020. The writing about the upcoming global pandemic was on the wall, yet I had enough time to calmly sell all my stocks during the week before everything came crashing down.<p>Same slowness with the reaction to Deepseek recently.
Two things.<p>1. The tariffs have not yet been felt. This is all projection. Once people feel the tariffs things are going to get much worse.<p>2. China has already retaliated. EU will announce retaliatory tariffs next week. Trump is likely to take it as a challenge and double down.
This is, bar none, the stupidest self-own on a national level I've ever seen, and that includes Brexit. These idiotic moves just erased a few trillion dollars of national wealth without getting anything in return.<p>For the rest of my life, if anyone ever again unironically says we need a businessman for president, I will laugh in their face.
Note that the Shiller ratio is <i>still</i> at 31.3.<p>Stocks are still historically expensive, and have much room to decline further.<p>Seeking peace of mind? Proceed to Bogleheads.org and read.
Trump is doing exactly the craziest versions of the stuff he promised to do, without guardrails and 'adults in the room' of his first admin.<p>Maybe its for the best so people are finally rid of this madness.
After months of talking about replacing income tax with tariffs, and his revered External Revenue Service replacing the IRS with trillions in tariff income per year, and just this morning saying that he'll never change his mind on this so manufacturers need to rush back (I guess Americans yearn for the $4 a day jobs making t-shirts or something), rapidly Trump and his sycophants are, in the face of market obliteration and literally everyone with a brain saying how dumb this all is, claiming it's a grand negotiating strategy. By mid-day various Trump supplicants like his sprog and Ackman were pretending there was a mad rush to negotiate the best terms first.<p>Vietnam, for instance, supposedly is on the phone "negotiating". But what is Vietnam going to negotiate? It has negligible trade barriers or tariffs -- we all realize the reciprocal thing is a ridiculous lie -- and an income per capita of like $2,500. Vietnam cannot fix the fact that they're cheap labour that quite literally benefits the US lifestyle.<p>In other words, after this profoundly stupid, catastrophically economically ignorant debacle, they're trying to back out <i>yet again</i>.<p>It is simply staggering how much of an idiocracy the US has become. In any normal government this clown would have people stopping him from this insanity. Instead he has slobbering bootlickers like Howard Lutnick trying to rationalize every bit of insanity.<p>And things will not return back to normal. Hundreds of billions of dollars of damage have already been done to the US, and this time they aren't going to fixed by another backtrack.
I hope people start taking Trump seriously now when he's talking about impeaching judges, critical media being illegal, running for a third term and taking over sovereign nations.
Knowing nearly nothing about the stock market, I say some time has to pass before we truly know whether these current (and probably temporary) consequences will persist.<p>I mean, people sign the death sentences of companies that have gradual decline of their stock prices over the course of some mere two months... and then it rebounds, and then you check the one-year graphs and are wondering why were you worried.<p>So I don't know. Is it really so bad? Honest question. I am a layman.
Trump recently "reTruthed" a video that claimed he is intentionally tanking the stock market to drive down interest rates. Today he called on Jerome Powell to lower interest rates despite the fact that there is a massive looming inflation risk.<p>Who in their right mind would care this much? Real estate investors: <a href="https://x.com/GrantCardone/status/1907993458687549892" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/GrantCardone/status/1907993458687549892</a><p>People were worried about Trump launching a coupe on the government. In the meantime, this is a coupe over the US economy - this is a blatant attempt to hand economic power from business investors to land investors. From industry to land wealth.<p>Trump is a capitalist trojan horse. He says it himself that he does not believe in competition. That the best/first brand should win and the others should lose. The most famous person should get the job over some nerd. He inherently does not believe in markets as a source of wealth.
I'm sorry, but how did Wall St "blow it"? Is the piece making the case that if this sell-off had started in January, then Trump wouldn't have magicked up these tariffs?
No, boomers and NGO's who raided the coffers blew it and left us with $36 trillion in debt, along with $1.2 trillion on _just the interest payments_ - which is more than the US spends on Defense.<p>Now we can't build anything, and the other side is still holding out hope that eventually we'll be able to fix by just taxing more - despite the fact that Congress won't even vote to prevent themselves from insider trading...which means the middle class will continue to bear the downward pressure.
One of the great oddities of this whole episode is watching people that have complained about unfettered free markets for years or decades suddenly become latter day Milton Friedman absolutists. Being of the libertarian side of things it has been deeply strange watching profoundly protectionist countries suddenly preaching the importance of the free trade they have been busy obstructing.<p>While the world swings from one authoritarian brand to another it does feel like a lonely place here for those of us that just want less intervention in everything.
It's a multitude of things.<p><pre><code> - High interest rates trying to combat inflation.
- AI, tech's latest, greatest thing is looking like a flop, at least from hype perspective.
- Tariffs.
</code></pre>
It will go back up after a quarter or three I suspect, once everyone has adjusted and everything has stabilized. It always does. Good time to buy soon if you have the scratch.