Trump promised these things during the campaign, and started on them as soon as he was in office.
Markets thought he was blustering, and so ran up between election day and Jan 20, and then a bit after.
So it was public news but nobody believed it. What triggered me was the indiscriminate firings and freezes. All that money, from USAID to NIH grants, sloshes around the US economy. You just can’t remove that much money without causing a recession (IMO; IANAEconomist)
If nothing else, unemployment should start to increase quickly
Tomorrow we get job openings and small business sentiment. If those are bad (and I’m sure the latter will be), I expect another bloodbath.
yep…timing the market requires both knowing when to get out AND knowing when to get back in.
True. But I think in this case @OldOlds nailed it. From Day 1 it’s been obvious trump is a chimp in a china shop. So the “sell” part is easy.
When to get back in? When trump & musk are unequivocally out and the people in charge are making credible noises of not continuing down the same path. Will I live that long? Maybe.
This is the problem, though, what happens when Trump & Musk decide instead of following a populist agenda that destroys the market, they are going to follow a new agenda that boosts it? They change their minds daily, based on whatever feels good at the moment. Or, Trump manages to fulfill his promise of taking over the Fed, and drops interest rates. That will cause many problems, but it probably will drive up the markets.
Uggh, I don’t know. I think it might be time to get out of everything, but where to put the money? The answer is wherever everyone else decides to put their money.
My big fear is that Trump & Musk decide to default on an debt payment. In that case, you’d better be out of USD and into just about any other currency.
If you need the money tomorrow, I suppose there’s an issue, but we came through 2008 without selling off, and am massively better off for it. This is going to be the same. I’m not selling anything, but may shift some money from BND to VTI. I wish a had a lot more cash so that I could buy into the market as it crashes. Barring a collapse of the United States as a whole, things will rebound. Sucks if you’re not in an index and have everything in Tesla, I suppose.
I do not like the odds on that bet.
The rate varies widely. I started a thread about this a while back that has been updated several times.
That is my problem. The folks who kept their money at home in their western European country during the leadup to WW-II lost everything as their markets evaporated along with their governments. Likewise folks who lived through various revolutions wherever on earth.
Volatility is the “price/fee” you pay for being in the market. That price being anxiety, fear, watching your portfolio value crash, all those things.
Don’t flinch. Or even look if it bothers you. It’s, obviously, worth the price because the long-term trend is always up.
Late: assuming you don’t have a short time horizon. If you do, you shouldn’t be so heavy in equities anyways.
Correction:
It’s, obviously, been worth the price to date in the USA because the long-term trend has always been up in the USA.
That has not, is not, and will not be true in countries that experience a disastrous change of government or severe inflation. Then it’s been downward. Very very very much downward. Without a recovery afterwards. There is an eventual rebuilding of the capital markets, but using all fresh imported capital from other countries owned by other people. Not by the ruined investors of the country of the prior regime.
Nevermind. I can’t read. You excepted the US.
I screwed up and buried my punchline. Which was:
If the USA is about to experience one of those changes of government, then all past USA performance is an inapplicable guide to the near future and the actual applicable guide is the stock markets of other freshly failed countries. Which are uniformly disastrous.
I wasn’t trying to set up a trap; sorry if my poor writing misled anyone about my meaning.
You (any you) are of course welcome to argue with my data and my conclusions properly understood; I sure don’t claim infallibility.
It reminds me of the one Polish joke I tell. Dates back from the Solidarity movement days and the strikes.
A Chicago Polish family sent $1000 to family back in their small hometown back in Poland
A thousand dollars! We don’t need it now …
We can put it the town bank.
But what if it folds?
They are guaranteed by the bank of Gdansk.
What if they fold?
They are backed by the bank of Warsaw.
If they fold?
Bank of Poland?
Backed by the USSR!
And if the USSR folds?
Well that is worth a measly thousand US dollars!
But just limit it to Trump’s administration…
I follow now, but I’m not sure where you’re getting that. I’m assuming you’re quoting yourself.
Regardless, “if” is doing all the work. I just disagree anything that dire is likely to happen.
I should have indented that, rather than quoting. That was meant to be understood as the forgotten third paragraph of my prior post.
And yes, I agree it’s all about the “if”. Reasonable minds may differ about just how bad things will get before they turn around.