As you surely know by now, unless you’ve been living in a cave, yet another one of my cynical predictions came true: that is, that the 90-day pause was meaningless, and that the looming July 9th deadline wouldn’t mean dick. And, speaking of dick, here’s the proof:
Thus, this mealymouthed Secretary tried his best to skirt and prance around the fact that his administration was kicking the can down the road yet again (or, I can use Trump Capitalization rules: his Administration was kickinG the Can down the Road yet aGain) magically changing the 90 day pause to , I dunno, a 111 day pause or something. You have my assurances that August 1 won’t mean dick either.
TACO rules the day. You should not count on ANY promise these people make. Why? Because – – let’s say it together! – – none of it means dick.
Naturally, the market took this news as positive, since all this saber-rattling about tariffs has become a never-ending joke, so the equity futures all shot higher.
I was confused, though, because the net price changes all show as negative, but after a few moments I realized that, for some stupid reason the quote provider is pretending that Friday’s holiday trading doesn’t count. Thus, we are simultaneously up (since we gapped higher from Friday’s close) but also down (since the net change from Thursday’s close is, in fact, negative).
Think of it as Schrodinger’s Market.
Here’s the ES:
And here’s the RTY (which I mislabeled; just like Trump, I offer a thousand pardons).
What’s absolutely comic is how, right on the heels of the Liberation Day disaster and, a week later, his utter retreat, have been all the shameless lies about how the phone’s ringing off the hook, and how leaders from all over the world are kissing Trump’s gigantic fat ass, and how trade deals are being made left, right, and sideways.
The fact is that a tiny handful of partial deals have been made with exceptionally easy trade partners, like the United Kingdom, and virtually nobody else.
Don’t get me wrong. I’d be delighted to see triple-digit tariffs to wreck the entire global economy, but c’mon, the man doesn’t have the sack for it. He did, for about seven days, but it didn’t last.
In any case, we’ll see how Monday goes for everyone, and, by God’s merciful grace, we actually get to enjoy two solid months of trading without some marvelous interruption like Juneteenth getting in our way. Let’s make the most of it!
