ANGLES.

To the surprise of absolutely no-one on Sunday, Trump backed down on his threat of a massive June 1st blanket 50% tariff on the European Union. The supposed effective date is now July 9th, which is the same day that the current pause on the April 2nd tariffs is set to expire. The deferral of this particular tariff risk injected some optimism into European markets while the US and the UK both enjoy...

As anticipated, the powerful symbolism of US sovereign debt being stripped of its final AAA credit rating the previous week weighed on stocks and unnerved the bond market on Monday morning. Trump of course deflected by blaming Biden, but the fact is that a downgrade like this results from the potential fiscal recklessness of this administration and also from foreign investors being driven to look...

Early on Monday morning, Treasury Secretary Bessent confirmed a 90-day “cooling-off period” between the US and China with both countries slashing their tariffs on each other. The US levy on China was taken down from 170% to 30% and China will now charge 10% on US goods instead of 125%. Wall Street took a victory lap, taking credit for having taught the administration the harsh lesson that high tar...

Trump couldn’t help himself at the weekend and took another one of his regular juvenile potshots at Fed chairman Powell, this time he’s apparently “a total stiff” . But he graciously conceded that he’s not about to fire him (because by law he can’t). Wall Street just rolled its eyes and got on with the important stuff like focusing on earnings reports, economic data and the Fed meeting/Powell’s pr...

After a scorching 7% rally in just four trading days the previous week to almost pre-”Liberation Day” levels, stocks took a breather at the open on Monday as a jam-packed week of earnings reports and economic data got under way. The indexes spent most of the day heading slowly but steadily lower as institutional traders took some chips off the table, particularly in the tech arena, after the previ...

Trump’s simmering resentment towards Fed chairman Powell for not bowing to his demands for an immediate interest rate cut was set off again over the weekend by a widely-read pro-Powell opinion article in the Wall Street Journal which described the president’s tariff policy as a “tax” and an “error” . One analyst described any undermining of the Fed’s sacred independence as a “welcome to the jungle...

If I were a cynic (heaven forbid!), I might suggest that Apple chairman Tim Cook’s large donation to Trump’s inauguration fund may be starting to pay off. The president blunted his Chinese tariffs over the weekend by temporarily diluting levies on smartphones and other consumer electronics and brought overdue relief to the likes of Apple who saw its range of products benefit from the latest climbd...

So much to talk about this week, so let’s get right to it .. The weekend break did nothing to calm the stock market’s shredded nerves as the Trump administration met the widespread condemnation of its tariff policy ( “idiotic” was one of the kinder adjectives used) with only denial and defiance coupled with juvenile advice like “be cool” , “hang tough” and “take the medicine” . There were more gig...

Markets began last week as they had finished the previous one, in a world of pain. This was always going to be Tariff Week with Wednesday the key day of announcements, but the prospect of any walk-back of any kind diminished by the hour and the looming reality of tariff turbulence , its inevitable stagflationary effect and a resulting body blow to stock markets really began to set in. Asian and Eu...

Multiple reliable news outlets reported over the weekend that Trump’s April 2nd tariff bender would be more “targeted” in nature than had been initially feared, with a number of companies and even entire sectors maybe getting some kind of temporary reprieve. This gave the tiniest bit of hope that maybe peak tariff chaos might have now passed. Dip buyers jumped all over this on Monday and went barg...

A Fed week began on Monday with financial markets pretty much on hold. While there was zero probability of an interest rate cut announcement, the Wednesday March meeting of the interest rate-setting committee was still set to include the “Dot Plot & Statement of Economic Projections” ; members’ quarterly estimates of where they believe interest rates, inflation and economic growth are heading in t...

Over the weekend, Trump went on TV and pointedly refused to rule out a tariff-fueled recession in the United States. Anybody who attended an eighth grade economics class already understood this risk of course, but for Trump to come out and finally admit it was a new development. The administration's blasé attitude toward potentially setting off a severe downturn badly rattled Wall Street. The week...

Exhausting deadlines about tariffs are not going away (Warren Buffet described them as “an act of war” last week) and market volatility is an inevitable result. Despite the next tariff round looming within 24 hours, markets still seemed convinced on Monday morning that they would not in fact be implemented as promised and stocks initially moved higher at the open. Trump then came out and said ther...

The German federal elections on Sunday panned out mostly as expected and hoped for by financial markets with political stability still within reach after some negotiation in the coming weeks, avoiding a nasty surprise that would have hurt global stock prices. Wall Street briefly rebounded at the open on Monday morning after a difficult prior week, but doubts about the economy soon set in again, th...

US markets were closed on Monday for President’s Day. This left the focus on Europe where local stock markets, which have outperformed US stocks so far in 2025, were priced for what they perceive as a near-perfect outcome from the high-stakes German federal election coming up this weekend, which of course raises the risk of a nasty surprise if that doesn’t happen. A chasm is also opening up betwee...

Over the weekend, Trump fired off yet another tariff broadside on his way to the Super Bowl. This time he floated the idea of a 25% surcharge on steel and aluminum imports from anywhere in the world, but which would disproportionately impact Canada and Mexico. Wall Street seemed to have got into a mode of treating what it regarded as Trump’s posturing as just smoke and mirrors until actual policy...

Trump ushered in what the Wall Street Journal called “the dumbest trade war in history” at the weekend when his administration imposed punitive tariffs on a wide range of products from Canada (25% on non-energy goods and 10% on energy), Mexico (25%) and China (an additional 10% on already-existing tariffs) which were set to take effect on Tuesday. There was instant retaliation in kind within hours...

Jitters caused by yet another example of Trump tossing a hand grenade into a room and not worrying about the clean up until afterwards with the whole Colombia fiasco over the weekend ended up not being the main driver of prices on Monday morning. That honor went to Chinese startup DeepSeek which announced that it is producing cutting-edge AI with minimal costs and no next-gen chips, potentially de...

Investor attention was focused on the Capitol in Washington DC on Monday rather than on the New York Stock Exchange which was closed for Martin Luther King Day. Once sworn in, Trump doubled down on much of his campaign rhetoric in his inaugural address, including some of the more “out-there” proposals, notably promising an expansion of U.S. territorial claims not only on earth but also in space (t...

Over the weekend, oil prices rallied to their highest levels in five months, as a fresh wave of US sanctions against Russia’s energy industry threatened to slash supplies from one of the world’s top producers and only added to what is a growing list of financial market worries. Stock indexes came out of the gate on Monday morning by adding to the losses that have plagued investors so far in 2025,...

The week began with growing concerns on Wall Street about the potentially chaotic nature of the upcoming administration and its propensity to balloon the federal deficit by trillions of dollars and to reignite higher inflation based partly on increasingly bizarre online musings from Trump and Musk. These worries are being reflected by steadily rising interest rates, including that of the important...

The death of former President Carter on Monday means that, in keeping with tradition, US stock markets will be closed this coming Thursday, January 9th for the funeral. Monday was the penultimate trading day of 2024 and the session kicked off with more end-of-year institutional position adjustments and momentum-unwinding across the board. This put stocks very much on the back foot again, crystalli...

With the risk of a government shutdown pushed out to March, traders breathed a small sigh of relief over the weekend. But the chaotic intervention by Trump/Musk won’t be quickly forgotten by Wall Street, which is likely to view the whole political debacle as something of a preview of what can easily and frequently happen in 2025 and beyond. A holiday-riddled week that traditionally sees Santa bear...

As we entered 2024’s final full week of trading, political turmoil raged around the world. A vote of no-confidence brought down the German government, French national debt was downgraded by credit agencies after the selection of a new Prime Minister, Canada’s finance minister resigned in reaction to what she saw as Trudeau’s wimpy response to Trump’s tariff threats, presidential impeachment procee...

After the rapidly spiraling events in Syria over the weekend, attention was temporarily refocused on geopolitics and the potential tinderbox that is the Middle East region, where the chess pieces were being moved around following the abrupt disintegration of the Assad regime as everyone tried to work out who are the “goodies” and who are the “baddies” in this story. Both the U.S. and Israel immedi...