... While the stakes were higher in the financial crisis, with global economies on the brink of a depression and unemployment surging, for people in markets it was mostly a one-way trade. The number of parts moving now presents a unique challenge, says Gokhman, with the Federal Reserve inciting hair-trigger swings in banks, bond yields and currency while earnings season knocks stocks like Target Corp. and Macy’s Inc. up and down 10% or 20% a day. Maybe that would be fine if it weren’t for the president, whose Twitter blowups have gotten harder to navigate -- somehow -- as the summer dragged on...
... U.S. stock futures turned positive Monday afternoon in Asia after Trump said on the sidelines of the Group of 7 meeting that China has asked to re-start trade talks, hours after Beijing’s top negotiator publicly called for calm in response to a weekend of tit-for-tat tariff increases.
Friday’s gyrations were a new chapter for many veterans, proof that no blueprint exists. After watching index futures get felled by China’s $75 billion tariff counter-punch, bulls were relieved to see Powell push them back to green with a needle-threading speech at Jackson Hole. Trump summarily lambasted the Fed for doing “NOTHING!,” compared Powell with Xi Jinping and said he’d get back to everyone with a response. Wall Street had no recourse but to sit there as stocks slid almost 3% in the ensuing vacuum. “If I tell you ‘I’m going to punch you,’ that’s not as bad as me telling you, ‘I’m going to hurt you in a way that I’m not even going to tell you about,”’ Steve Chiavarone, a fund manager with Federated Investors, said in an interview. “Hey, something bad’s coming, hold on.”
These aren’t people who oppose everything Trump is doing. “We did need to resolve outstanding issues with China,” says Gokhman, though a coordinated approach with other countries that focused on intellectual property theft would’ve been preferable to a “sporadic” one that risks stymieing capital investment. To Chiavarone, 35, it’s “absolutely a battle worth fighting.” A technological revolution is going on, “and the country that controls the intellectual capital that’s driving that revolution will very likely be
the world’s preeminent power,” he said. Still, tactics matter, “and undoubtedly the ratcheting up of tariffs has a negative impact on earnings, sentiment and financial markets.” ...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-25/stakes-were-higher-in-2008-but-it-s-way-weirder-trading-trump
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