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US President Donald Trump announces pause in ‘reciprocal’ tariffs for all countries but China
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- Title
- Stocks open flat, bonds retreat as China, E.U. retaliate against U.S. tariffs
- Published
- Apr 9 2025
So it is a pump and dump right? NVDA I bought for shits and giggles yesterday is already up 20%
It was in the opposite direction of a pump and dump, though - prices were temporarily down.
Though, it's not over by any means.
A short and court?
Dump and pump
Dump and slump?
Dump and Trump.
I was about to buy something yesterday but got distracted and then, next thing I knew, it was up 36% :( :) :( :)
It ended the day up 55%.
I can't stand him.
Is this actually going to improve things though? My laymen's understanding is that uncertainty is the most dangerous part right now. Does this actually decrease uncertainty at all?
Anyone have realistic predictions on what's to come?
Both. It improves things in the short term since there’s less immediate disruption. It still is problematic, since there’s still a very high tariff on a major trading partner and immense uncertainty after 90 days.
It sounds like the bond market is what finally scared him into the pause. Those numbers were getting dangerous.
So I feel like we've learned something: Trump is not angling for a total economic collapse and will try to avoid causing the US to default on its debts. But at the same time, this demonstrated a huge vulnerability in Trump's negotiation tactics. If he pisses them off enough, other countries that hold a lot of US debt — which includes China — can unilaterally wreck the US economy, and this trade war still isn't over.
I, personally, feel a lot less confident in US treasuries now than I did in December.
The whole thing reminds me a lot of the Liz Truss Experience™ here in the UK: a very ideological approach to the economy that very quickly ends up in near disaster. In both cases it looks like more sensible hands have stepped in or had the appropriate conversations behind the scenes. But I can't imagine the Republican Party is going to drop Trump like the Conservatives did Truss.
I’d still consider that this might have been the plan all along.
We’ve downgraded from an economy crushing disastrous idea to merely a terrible idea that will raise prices and slow growth but not cause Great Depression 2.0.
I imagine the tariffs in China will be wrapped into some deal with TikTok. But we’re just going to keep riding this ride until Congress takes their tariff power back.
No we're not downgraded. We're "wait and see what happens in 90 days." Crazy idiotic bastard has been going on about tariffs for decades. I doubt he's done.
More of the same. He flexed a muscle, saw the result and will continue to do so until the effect is no longer useful to his bank account.
VIX is hovering around 35, it was up to 60 briefly, then hovering around 45 prior to announcement.
So technically yes, it has decreased uncertainty (volatility).
However...........
VIX in normal boring Biden times, with low drama, generally hovered around 12-18, with spikes up to 22 or so, occasionally higher, but briefly.
So.
VIX hovering around 30 as the new norm, with spikes up to 45+ regularly is...fucking insane. It means risk is priced quite a bit higher than usual because risk is even more dangerous now. All it takes is a "Truth" doubling the base tariff to 20% and we are back in evencrazier land (we are currently in crazy land).
So maybe there is something to that theory of "It's all some dump scheme. He introduces tariffs so he can crash the markets, buy low, and then retract them."
I just asked myself if I'm joking on that one, but honestly... I'm not sure anymore. Maybe we'll all wake up tomorrow and the past three months have been a bad joke? :S
Even if you were joking, it is unambiguously what he is doing.
This morning he made a post saying "good time to buy" and everyone who did made big money. He's dumping the market through wildly "stupid" moves, buying, fixing the stupid moves, and then making millions or trillions. He is now not afraid to actually tell people to also do it.
Get ready for a recession
I think someone is definitely making out like a bandit.
I could not possibly be less surprised by this.
I remembered this post when reading some articles today. Adam Schiff Calls For Insider Trading Investigation into Trump Over Tariff Pause. Further, Trump said he wrote his announcement on Truth Social with with Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. Lutbick is a billionaire Wall Street exec and Bessent is a hedge fund manager.
https://www.politico.eu/article/donald-trump-tariff-policy-change-trade-war/
I don't speak investese, any chance you could explain some of this? I think I caught that people were buying a ton of calls BEFORE Trump made the buy announcement but then I have no idea what the rest was talking about.
If you pay (a lot of money) you can get the options flow data (and then resell it + visualization tools, what UW does), and basically collect time stamps on all trades (it's a LOT of data).
They basically noticed an absolute boatload of 0 days to expiry 509 calls being bought just before the announcement. This is strong evidence someone knew something beforehand.
If they weren't certain, and buying that many, they would have gone with longer DTE, and probably hedged by selling an equal number of calls, or some more complicated strategy.
The fact that they knew the time to get in, the duration (0 day, literally expiring at same day close), and just the right strike for almost max profit (509 vs 520, the latter would have been cheaper) is extreeeeeeeeemely sus.
There's not really anything else. They bought a bunch of calls guessing that SPY would go up to $509 yesterday, and then those went up in value by 2100%.
This has been what I've seen as him doing for a while, if not the primary purpose, then certainly profiteering from the harm he's causing.
Burn down the economy so he and his buddies can have a bonfire party around it.
I think that this continues to show the danger of one man having the power to levy taxes at will. Maybe the US should consider something like the Magna Carta to keep their king in check.
Well he’s not supposed to have this power. He just acts like a king and Congress lets him.
Hm.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta
I suspect Trump's billionaire buddies finally got through to him about the magnitude of the consequences for his shenanigans. The U.S. Treasury markets were about to freeze up (archive link), with horrifying effects.
The whole financial system is too brittle, interdependent, and overleveraged to tolerate more of Mr. Trump's Wild Ride.
From the article:
…
Archive link
Worth noting that with the 10% still being up and the tariffs on China still being there, it's still going to have a major impact on everyone and everything. American consumers are going to feel this effect the most, though.
It'll also be interesting to see if the EU will still retaliate.
Now those arbitrage opportunities look like huge money makers. Proxying goods through Vietnam or India or the Philippines when China has a massive tariff and you don’t is easy money.
Edit: Either Bezos is getting fucked or he's planning some kind of proxy setup in Asia.
Oh god. It's not Asia. It's New Zealand. Ship everything to NZ, charge fees to "edit" origin to NZ, NZ gets money because of billionaires, billionaires get bigger billionaire bunkers. They survive the economic apocalypse while we all rot.
This guy fucking sucks, man.