Below is my weekly video for members of Macke's Retail Roundup.
My universe, the land of the consumer, has taken center stage. The eye of the storm, if you will. The center of the volcano. The hottest part of the mantle.
And every tariff headline sends the market swinging. Last week, it was down. This week...down, then up, then down. We're stuck in a tariff circle of hell.
So what does this mean for the portfolio? And what am I doing about it? I broke it all down in this week's video.
Seven days after Liberation Day things are working out just about as expected in the equity markets. Chaos!
Until this afternoon's 90 day delay announcement every rally met supply. Rumors were quickly squashed and the White House vowed to hold the line on anything other than full victory. And just like that, there was a 90 day delay. Would it have been easier to just delay the tariffs 90 days in the first place? Stop overthinking it.
We have 90 days and have undone a lot of the damage done over the last week. It's a welcome piece of new news and one of the items on the 3-step Wish List I shared with Spencer earlier this week. But it doesn't change much. If you were over-levered this morning it might be time to take a little off the table and give thanks. Uncertainty will be back but for now it certainly is nice for stocks to be irrational in the other direction.
Long-term, China, Vietnam and Indonesia are something of the Big Three in shoes and apparel. I believe but am not sure China and the US are still pushing a combined 200% tariff level. Let's just say a lot of merchants and vendors doing business in the mall are rooting for the Vietnam...
Stocks are getting destroyed all over the entire world. Things could turn on a dime but, for the moment and for good reasons investors are selling risk assets. The selling is global, the Volatility Index has spiked. Over the weekend social media was dominated by talk of the crash, the tariffs and the need to get off this path as fast as possible before we do more permanent damage.
As I discussed in real time last week ("Sound the Alarm") there was a single flash point for this crash: the ridiculous, clumsy, catastrophic moment the POTUS held up his chart.
Why was the placard so bad. Well, I wrote about it here and my friend @The-Real-Fly on Twitter rather neatly sums up the point here:
The Rules of the Casino
That about covers it. Trump changed the rules of the international finance casino. In markets of all kinds participants value "stable" over "fair". Meaning they'll deal with slightly...
