Tariffs Catch-All

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nycfan said:
Had a purchase offer and a specific vehicle I wanted and opportunity to walk away owning outright without much effort. The time it would take me to sell it had time-value, too. But understand and debated your argument.
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Makes sense, especially if you were getting a good deal on the new one.
 
nycfan said:
Market futures turning slightly positive at the moment. 🤷‍♀️
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The so called market "experts" still are not buying ANY of this tariff talk and threats. The market "thinks" Trump is just forcing everyone to come to the table and capitulate to Trump's wishes.

Many are saying all these tariffs will be gone by mid year, just a few months away. They haven't even started yet.

I've worked in this area for decades. I've seen markets spooked down 15% or more over NOTHING. Yet, all this craziness, and the market is barely sneezing.
 
Kraftyheel89 said:
The so called market "experts" still are not buying ANY of this tariff talk and threats. The market "thinks" Trump is just forcing everyone to come to the table and capitulate to Trump's wishes.

Many are saying all these tariffs will be gone by mid year, just a few months away. They haven't even started yet.

I've worked in this area for decades. I've seen markets spooked down 15% or more over NOTHING. Yet, all this craziness, and the market is barely sneezing.
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I've always thought the after-hours futures markets in the US are not good at price discovery. The first sign will be the Asian markets, I think. But hold on one minute. I'm going to post something else.
 
So we've read about internal fighting between Lutnick and Bessent. Lutnick was about reciprocal tariffs; Bessent wants a universal tariff. So we got both.

BUT the universal tariff might not be so bad. Because it's universal, its primary effect could be to just raise the value of the dollar without affecting trade flows. Basically, there will be a 10% tax on everything, but the imports will be 10% less expensive because of the currency movements, and everything is a wash.

Unless there is retaliation. But anyway, the universal tariff was what Bessent was writing about last year. I don't remember how he handled retaliation. He's directionally correct, though I would not expect the dollar appreciation to fully adjust dollar for dollar.

The reciprocal tariffs, by contrast, are absolute lunacy and the currencies will not be able to adjust. I'd have to check my math, but I think it's impossible for a matrix of bilateral currency rates to arrive at a set of stable equilibria if those other currencies can be traded (as of course they are) and if there are different rates for each country. In that case, we'd end up with a dollar that kinda sorta adjusts to averages, but it would be an absolute mess.
 
nycfan said:
Had a purchase offer and a specific vehicle I wanted and opportunity to walk away owning outright without much effort. The time it would take me to sell it had time-value, too. But understand and debated your argument.
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In fairness to you, I can see how you're strapped for cash since apparently subscribe to every media outlet, blog and substack forum known to humankind. And share them all with us, generously, of course.
 
Super,
You are correct, you can not read anything into after hours trading. I'm not saying stocks won't have a bad day tomorrow, in fact I think they will.

But after hours trading is just a tiny fraction of trading. There will be more orders waiting to execute at market open, than are traded in all of after hours trading. It is probably 10X the amount in a normal day.

So the market will open and trade based on market orders filled at open. After hours doesn't mean shit.
 
Kraftyheel89 said:
The so called market "experts" still are not buying ANY of this tariff talk and threats. The market "thinks" Trump is just forcing everyone to come to the table and capitulate to Trump's wishes.

Many are saying all these tariffs will be gone by mid year, just a few months away. They haven't even started yet.

I've worked in this area for decades. I've seen markets spooked down 15% or more over NOTHING. Yet, all this craziness, and the market is barely sneezing.
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I'm seeing some futures/after-hours trading down. But I agree, Trump has a Houdini-like ability to avoid tanking markets despite his best efforts.
 


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Early/immediate US futures may have been a misunderstanding of the proposal? Or maybe US futures now responding to foreign futures?
 
Smoke and mirrors. Who I really feel sorry for? That dumbass UAW worker that pitched Trump and his handling tariffs because "Detroit has been decimated by auto plant closings."

That guy will be fine, he looks close to retirement and probably has a great pension. But he doesn't have a clue. If he thinks auto plants are our future, he is as dumb as the average MAGAt. Those jobs are going away. Robotics and tech will replace most line workers. Better tell your offspring and grandkids to get a tech degree or trade skill. Auto line jobs are dying, everywhere.
 
Kraftyheel89 said:
Smoke and mirrors. Who I really feel sorry for? That dumbass UAW worked that pitched Trump and his handling tariffs because "Detroit has been decimated by auto plant closings."

That guy will be fine, he looks close to retirement and probably has a great pension. But he doesn't have a clue. If he thinks auto plants are our future, he us as dumb as the average MAGAt. Those jobs are going away. Robotics and tech will replace most line workers. Better tell your offspring and grandkids to get a tech degree or trade skill. Auto line jobs are dying, everywhere.
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Yep. My boy is studying robotics and quantum physics. He's taking a quantum computing class next year. But my boy has the advantage of being exceptionally smart. It's going to be rougher for those in the middle of the IQ distribution. Who deserve every bit as much of a decent life as those further to the right on the distribution.

Watch the currency markets. They might have a clue about what will happen. AND -- let's assume the dollar rises by 5% against rest of world. So that makes US assets 5% more valuable on a relative basis. That could help the stock market. Until the retaliatory tariffs kick in.
 
I'd just like to take a moment to put into perspective how the U.S. stock markets are basically discounting any real impact of these tariffs.

1) First, a 10%+ correction is nothing more than an average year in the market we average a correction once per year. Even in years when the S&P ended up positive for the year or had a great year, we usually had an 8-10+% pullback or correction at some point.

2) I am going by memory, but I believe it was Q4 2018. The U.S. stock market was down about 15% in the final quarter alone. Why? Because the World Bank reduced 2019 expected world exenomic growth from 3% to 2%. The U.S. market panicked because the Fed was in the process of raising rates after keeping them at 0% for nearly a decade. The Fed said it still saw a strong economy so planned to stay on course *raising rates." Market was spooked and dropped 15%.

The first Fed meeting in Jan. of following year, the Fed made one simple change to it's notes. "We will continue to follow the economy in real time and adjust accordingly." Voila, market back up 15% just like that.

Fast forward to today. The market is only down about 5% YTD. It is basically shrugging this off. It is completely irrational right now.
 
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