Posted on 03/15/2025 12:00:05 PM PDT by SoConPubbie
p class="a9d-pre">If you’re looking for an explanation of why the stock market has been stumbling, the financial press has a ready-made answer: blame Trump’s tariffs.
The claim is familiar, convenient, and utterly predictable. It also happens to be wrong. Markets don’t move in neat response to political narratives, and the idea that investors suddenly woke up to the perils of trade policy months after Trump was elected is as laughable as it is lazy.
If the press had a better explanation, they’d use it—so long as it made President Trump look bad. Instead, they’re dusting off the same script they used in 2018. But the numbers—and history—tell a very different story.
Over the last few weeks, technology stocks and other speculative assets cratered, while safe assets such as Berkshire Hathaway, Treasury bonds, and dividend-paying stocks have held steady or even risen. If tariffs were driving the selloff, we would see broad market declines, not a selective retreat from high-risk, high-valuation stocks. This isn’t about tariffs—it’s about investors finally reckoning with the excesses of the past few years.
John Rekenthaler, Vice President for Research at Morningstar, put it plainly: speculators have ruled the market for years, chasing anything that looked exciting. But when confidence shakes, they stampede out the exits—just like we’re seeing now.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
This selloff isn’t a referendum on tariffs or Trump’s policies. It’s a market recalibrating after years of massive overspending by government and speculative excess. Investors are running to safety. And Wall Street is looking for a scapegoat. Don’t buy the spin. This isn’t about Trump’s tariffs. It’s about a market waking up to economic reality, and that reality isn’t as bad as the fearmongers want you to believe.
This is what I have been telling my friends. Free money spigot is slowing.
They didn’t run. They carefully hid and played the options. With NVidia at 105, every tech stock holder jumped back in. Me included. I got out of NVidia taking a 10k loss. I held cash and bought it back at 108. I’m now up and when it hits 150 again,I’ll be out and newly retired.
Simply reinforces what most of us already know—the media, “financial media” included, have no idea why things happen, and generally make up post hoc “explanations” without evidence or rationale.
Reaganbush
Bushhitler
Chimpbush
Trumpsfault
whaaaaa
The market is having withdrawal symptoms. Getting over any addiction is unpleasant. But the alternative is, in the long run, far worse.
“The market is having withdrawal symptoms. Getting over any addiction is unpleasant. But the alternative is, in the long run, far worse.”
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The market was reacting to extensive political disruption in the USA, coupled with valid concerns about the impact of tariffs on market values. That’s why the market losses weren’t limited to the USA, but were reflected in markets worldwide.
As much as we gripe about globalism here, the reality is that all of our markets are intertwined and teasing them apart creates new problems.
Quite the opposite actually.
Aside from other issues— What tariffs?
So far we have just seen a competent negotiation team soften up their counter-parties a little bit. If you want to move somebody’s position you start with jawboning and threats to the prior assumptions that keep them from meeting your objectives.
Canada is highly vulnerable to changes in U.S. trade changes. Make them sensitive to that. Accustom their leaders to that reality. Get tariffs into the realistic conversations. Build voter population’s tolerance for tariffs and other less-than-friendly interactions.
Negotiation strategies
Talk is cheap. Tariffs come after the negotiation groundwork is done. Tariffs can be risky and expensive, only a beginner would start with action before verbal positioning.
Investors who listen to the talk are foolish. Action is probably coming, but the talk comes first and does not predict the later action. If the action were predictable, the talk wouldn’t have the strong “bite” that a negotiator needs.
Mexico is a different story, but the same negotiation principles will show there also. Talk first.
Which stocks are retreating because of constraint on givernment spending?
I believe a lot of the market ups and downs are caused by Hedge Funds along with other groups that get together and decide: We all start selling of at opening bell on a certain day and when the markets looses 300 point we buy back in.
Trumps tariffs are hardball negotiating points. The EU and other countries cannot afford to lose the US market, the largest economy in the world. For the first time in decades the US is looking after its own economic interests first rather than worrying about what the countries think. Of course the US media is pumping up the narrative
of economic doom because of Trumps policies
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