Over the course of 2019, the two principal success stories of the present administration have been (a) the calming of tensions, paving the way to a lasting peace deal, with North Korea and (b) the settling of a trade war, by way of a phased approach to a grand bargain.
So this morning we are greeted with news that basically both of these success stories are heading into a dumpster:
Just to be clear, this environment of good news and the beaten-to-death phrase “trade talk optimism” has added thousands upon thousands of points to the Dow and hundreds of points to the S&P 500:
So in a rational world, the Dow would be down, oh, about 4,000 points right now. Yet, as we all know from the past decade, rationality left the building eons ago, and as I’m typing this, the NQ has collapsed 0.08%. Please feel free to use your electron microscopes if you need to see the effect this double-dose of bad news is having on equities.
I guess it’s all about liquidity, right? As long as that pathological liar Jerome Powell keeps spewing garbage, everything’s just peaches and cream. One day we will look back at this era and shake our heads. We are all living a jumbo-sized version of WeWork, except vastly more widespread.
