The Nation's Financial Condition

[Brooklyn]

[RedFromMI]

As always there is a tweet for everything...

[jhu72]

Making America not so great. For those who think the world can't function without us.

[a fan]

Odd, it's almost as if started multiple fake Trade Wars intended to impress Trump's base has negative side effects.

Personally? I think "we need to be patient", continue to move forward with no plan whatsoever, and hope that the remainder of of America's farmers don't kill themselves while we sit around and do nothing about the actual problems with China.

Neat. Gee. Didn't see this coming.

Maybe we should use a stimulus package with those tax cuts that "paid for themselves".....right?

[jhu72]

[jhu72]

So who is winning the trade war?

[foreverlax]

Going to be very difficult to beat Trump with this happening.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-s ... =home-page

Going to be impossible to beat Trump if the Democrats nominate Elizabeth Warren, who promises to reverse the above link.

Some different views -

Bleak decade ahead for stock and bond returns, warns Morgan Stanley

“We expect U.S. stocks and U.S. Treasurys to see [returns of] 4.9% and 2.8% each year, respectively, over the next decade, driving expected returns for a traditional 60/40 equity/bond USD portfolio close to a century low,” said a team of the bank’s strategists, including Serena Tang and Andrew Sheets, in a note to clients on Sunday.

Bank of America declares ‘the end of the 60-40’ standard portfolio

“The challenge for investors today is that both of those benefits from bonds, diversification and risk reduction, seem to be weakening, and this is happening at a time when positioning in many fixed-income sectors is incredibly crowded, making bonds more vulnerable to sharp, sudden selloffs when active managers rebalance,” the authors wrote.


“The core premise of every 60/40 portfolio is that bonds can hedge against risks to growth and equities can hedge against inflation; their returns are negatively correlated,” Woodard and Harris added. “But this assumption was only true over the past two decades and was mostly false over the prior 65 years. The big risk is that the correlation could flip, and now the longest period of negative correlation in history is coming to an end as policy makers jolt markets with attempts to boost growth.”

[ChairmanOfTheBoard]

curious to hear what you guys think about the past week and the near future... seems like markets have calmed a bit, and lately, just keep going up.

of course, fed pumping, lower rates, etc.

and then this- the possibility that the US and China may bilaterally start removing tariffs incrementally. https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/china-says- ... -1.1344334

while the tariffs have certainly caused some bad days in markets- this says september alone collected $7b, up 9% from august. https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-collec ... 1573052402

[jhu72]

curious to hear what you guys think about the past week and the near future... seems like markets have calmed a bit, and lately, just keep going up.

of course, fed pumping, lower rates, etc.

and then this- the possibility that the US and China may bilaterally start removing tariffs incrementally. https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/china-says- ... -1.1344334

while the tariffs have certainly caused some bad days in markets- this says september alone collected $7b, up 9% from august. https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-collec ... 1573052402

The question is, how much in sales did we give up to pickup the $7 billion in tariff charges, how much did US companies pay in tariffs. Is that $7 billion more than the lost sales + the tariffs paid by US companies?

[ChairmanOfTheBoard]

curious to hear what you guys think about the past week and the near future... seems like markets have calmed a bit, and lately, just keep going up.

of course, fed pumping, lower rates, etc.

and then this- the possibility that the US and China may bilaterally start removing tariffs incrementally. https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/china-says- ... -1.1344334

while the tariffs have certainly caused some bad days in markets- this says september alone collected $7b, up 9% from august. https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-collec ... 1573052402

The question is, how much in sales did we give up to pickup the $7 billion in tariff charges, how much did US companies pay in tariffs. Is that $7 billion more than the lost sales + the tariffs paid by US companies?

i was thinking along the same lines- and my answer (in my head at least) was "offset by potential job creation". hard to quantify, at best.

the 11 year run has to end sometime...

[a fan]

while the tariffs have certainly caused some bad days in markets- this says september alone collected $7b, up 9% from august. https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-collec ... 1573052402

Yes. It's collected that money from US citizens and business owners like me.

And to what end?

[ChairmanOfTheBoard]

same as above- hard to quantify. even if you could put an exact # on job creation (and who believes the words coming from an elected officials mouth), how could you attribute to tariffs, versus those that were being created anyway?

[jhu72]

while the tariffs have certainly caused some bad days in markets- this says september alone collected $7b, up 9% from august. https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-collec ... 1573052402

Yes. It's collected that money from US citizens and business owners like me.

And to what end?

Ah, that is correct. My formula is wrong. Brain fart.

[a fan]

curious to hear what you guys think about the past week and the near future... seems like markets have calmed a bit, and lately, just keep going up.

of course, fed pumping, lower rates, etc.

and then this- the possibility that the US and China may bilaterally start removing tariffs incrementally. https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/china-says- ... -1.1344334

Yes. As I said would happen. All this pointless economic damage so that Trumpy can look tough to his fans. And it worked like a charm. Posters here were impressed

I'd love to hear from those who were fans of this strategy: what message did Trump just send the Chinese if he simply removes the tariffs with no meaningful concessions?

That's right folks. Trump just made the situation worse.

[a fan]

same as above- hard to quantify. even if you could put an exact # on job creation (and who believes the words coming from an elected officials mouth), how could you attribute to tariffs, versus those that were being created anyway?

You're forgetting that China and the EU are levying tariffs, too......and what's happening to American exports overseas because of this nonsense.

Jack Daniel's sales dropped by more than 21% in the EU, for example.

This has cost us billions.

[foreverlax]

Goldman did a report that showed an increase of 3% of those products impacted by tarrifs, while those products that have not faced tariffs have decline 1%.

Both concluded that although tariffs are formally assessed on U.S. importers when they bring in goods from foreign countries, the costs are passed on almost entirely to consumers.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/despite-re ... cle_inline

[ChairmanOfTheBoard]

same as above- hard to quantify. even if you could put an exact # on job creation (and who believes the words coming from an elected officials mouth), how could you attribute to tariffs, versus those that were being created anyway?

You're forgetting that China and the EU are levying tariffs, too......and what's happening to American exports overseas because of this nonsense.

Jack Daniel's sales dropped by more than 21% in the EU, for example.

This has cost us billions.

ohh i didnt forget.... in fact, it's why i posted this to begin with! the discussion is bilateral. though, just a "discussion" at this point.

well, let's see if bilateral actually happens. DJ Trump has a way of turning things he touches into ___.

[MDlaxfan76]

same as above- hard to quantify. even if you could put an exact # on job creation (and who believes the words coming from an elected officials mouth), how could you attribute to tariffs, versus those that were being created anyway?

You're forgetting that China and the EU are levying tariffs, too......and what's happening to American exports overseas because of this nonsense.

Jack Daniel's sales dropped by more than 21% in the EU, for example.

This has cost us billions.

ohh i didnt forget.... in fact, it's why i posted this to begin with! the discussion is bilateral. though, just a "discussion" at this point.

well, let's see if bilateral actually happens. DJ Trump has a way of turning things he touches into ___.

The political calculation the Trump folks have to be considering is whether the costs/risks of the tariffs will weigh the economy down so much over the next year that it hurts the economic argument for continuing with Trump, particularly in those states and industries being hurt the most by the trade 'war' or whether that's a risk worth taking in order to maintain "we're standing up to China" political benefits.

My hunch is that the Trump folks are concluding that the economic risks/costs are too great and they'll 'declare victory' with whatever China provides for 'face saving', if anything. They'll claim they are still 'standing up to China' and the base will buy it. "At least Trump fights for us, no one else does".

Baloney, but that's the politics.

[ChairmanOfTheBoard]

this is exactly what im saying. yes.

[a fan]

Same thing I said would happen from day one.

Of course, China has to be willing to give Trump his Pyrrhic victory.

If I was them? I'd hit us with more tariffs. I guess that depends on whether or not they want Trump for another 4 years.