Given my obvious relative enthusiasm for investing in Europe relative to the USA, readers may be wondering if I would now take a different view after Trump’s most recent announcement of a 30% tariff on what I think is meant to be the EU trading block.
Markets
Deep Dive – July 2025
Half time scores
We are now at the end of the first 6 months 0f 2025 and more significantly, a little under that much into Trump 2.0. What has been the actual impact of the orange one’s political and economic ‘policies’’ on markets? To what extent have our advance calls on the widely anticipated instability and general weirdness that followed the election of Donald J Trump protected our portfolios or better still, left us exposed to new opportunities?
YAP – Dirty old men
We are currently living through one of those periods when geo-political risk is far and away the factor most likely to influence our financial well-being.
It is generally true that markets are not the economy and vice-versa and economic principals at a high level are somewhat insulated from political shenanigans, but at the moment we have a US president whose policies are so disturbing to investors that the US Dollar is under considerable pressure, which is definitely a relevant ‘macro’ issue for investors, and we have the war in Ukraine driving a sea change in military spending in Europe and the war in the Middle East (when is there not a war in the Middle East?) pushing up oil prices, both wars being factors investors need to count as relevant,
Thinking through the ultimate drivers of the rather disturbing global geo-political scenario, with the aim of predicting how much worse things will get before they get better (by better, I mean more predicable and stable), one cannot avoid thinking: Trump, Putin, Netanjahu, Khameinei. Today’s Guardian newspaper has a cartoon featuring these characters under the heading ‘Country for Old Men’, playing on the Coen brothers’ film of that name, based on Cormac McCarthy’s novel. I understand that the film revolves around money, is extremely violent and many innocent bystanders get killed. The protaganists are utterly ruthless and without symapathy. So the cartoonist’s satire seems highly appropriate.
YAP – False optimism?
Markets in the developed world seems to have taken the announced pause on the Liberation Day tariffs as suggesting that the more market friendly component of Trump’s acolytes has got the upper hand and the pro-tariff lobby has been banished to the broom cupboard (to paraphrase the FT).
I think it is perfectly normal for markets to react positively to good news, even if it is only a deferment of bad news. However, such rallies usually end when the researchers and strategists get round to looking at what risks still remain. And there is a really big one, one that is more a dinosaur than an elephant in the room.
Deep Dive – May 2025
Trump 2 – 100 days and a little more clarity
I would not normally expect to be writing this monthly piece as an ongoing running commentary on a single macro economic factor, but the impact of Trump’s presidency on the global economy and investment markets and therefore on our personal wealth is so dramatic and directly relevant that I expect that you would welcome a reasoned opinion on the implications of where we are now, just over 3 months into this global (insert expletive of your choice here).
After the first false dawn, when markets (especially in the USA) were assuming that reduced regulation and a more business climate friendly environment would allow already over valued equities to continue marching upwards, the reality of tariffs calculated by a methodology that was so primitive it was genuinely beyond belief, flip flopping on that and all the rest you know about, has all served to create a climate of uncertainty and what’s more, direct and immediate practical consequences including a supply shock for goods coming out of China. Trump’s 100 day speech, reported the day I publish this article, is said to be full of falsehoods and more of the same bombast.
YAP – Snippets
Here are some of the most interesting points I gleaned from a Morningstar presentation last week, taking a look at prospects for European markets in the second quarter. Although the focus was Europe, the head of global equity strategy was on the call, so the macroeconomic content of the call was actually quite broad.
Naturally the message running through all the commentary was, stick of rock like, Trump’s tariffs. I actually thought it was quite bold of Morningstar (MS) to even offer a forward-looking commentary, and the European lead had to admit that he had needed to redo several of his charts in the days approaching the call, which was at the end of last week, and by today had already been overtaken to a certain extent by further vague prognostications from members of the US administration.