Comment by skybrian
6 hours ago
I'm doubtful that knowing how much politics matters, but only in a vague way, would have been enough to help them. Could someone who was obsessed with following the Trump administration's every move have predicted the tariffs in advance? I don't think financial markets priced them in?
This isn't about timing the market by being clairvoyant about the timing of a madman's tariffs.
This is about taking reasonable risk calculations as a small business with extremely high tariff exposure, when a president who did a bunch of high tariffs last time wins and election and says he'll do it again.
Sure multi-trillion-dollar financial institutions didn't run for the hills because they get paid when it goes up and paid when it goes down.
It was extremely easy to see them coming, because he talked about the repeatedly.
The markets priced in him backing down repeatedly, which he has.
He literally said he was gonna:
"Trump vows massive new tariffs if elected, risking global economic war"
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/08/22/trump-tra...
(https://archive.is/20231125045858/https://www.washingtonpost...)
EDIT - Found this after my post, a MUCH better "he said it":
https://www.donaldjtrump.com/agenda47/agenda47-president-tru...
And he did it last time too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariffs_in_the_first_Trump_adm...
“Living under a rock” is the technical term, I believe.
Yep, in his first term he was called "tariff man" (among other things).
He didn't do it the same way last time. Trump's second term is significantly different.
Yeah, I find it curiously delusional, but the reality seems to be a segment of the population just refuses to accept the drastic change in pace to political change.
No, knowing that Trump really likes tariffs is not enough to know specifically how he's going to do it. (And which laws he's going to break to get there.)
Well yeah, but the man is also a pathological liar. I would not blame anyone for not believing he was going to do anything that he said he would do.
They were very much priced in, you had retailers purchasing a lot of imports in Q1 to prepare for them. What wasn’t priced in was the scale, which is what resulted in the initial sell off in April until the administration walked back the steepest rates
let me guess... you don't follow politics either...