Courtesy of Pam Martens
Donald Trump
If you have ever watched the past Chairs of the Federal Reserve give their semi-annual testimony before the U.S. House and Senate, you are aware of how carefully they parse their words to avoid rattling the stock or bond markets. That’s how people in high places in government with insider information behave.
But now we have Rambo in the Oval Office, randomly throwing grenades into already wildly fluctuating markets. This leads foreign investors as well as U.S. investors to question if they want their life savings to be invested in this carnival barker-like circus. Bloomberg News underscores this reality with an article today about a $60 billion money manager who is considering selling all of his U.S. assets because of the political risk.
At around 8:40 p.m. last eve, we settled in to watch the news. We learned that President Trump had released a statement indicating a plan to impose “$100 billion of additional tariffs” on China. The U.S. had already announced tariffs on $50 billion of Chinese products and China had responded in kind. The stock market has been fluctuating wildly in recent days on fears of a prolonged trade war.
We checked to see how futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average were responding to this news. As expected, they were showing a big downdraft of minus 360 points. (The SEC should investigate to see if anyone had outsized negative bets on U.S. index futures last night.)
The plunge in markets came in response to this official statement from the President:
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