[Whisperzzzzzzz]

Whisperzzzzzzz, on 02 April 2025 - 11:14 PM, said:

Azath Vitr (D, on 02 April 2025 - 09:29 PM, said:

Stock market plunging after tariff announcement. Much worse than expected.

It appears the tariffs will stack with previously announced tariffs as well. So that's an almost 50% tariff on Japanese cars.

And the 25% auto tariff will apply to all computers as well---and not just computers somehow connected with automobiles. Laptops, desktops, etc.

UK not exempt from the baseline 10% tariff on all foreign goods.

Economists were predicting that a 20% tariff on all foreign goods would lead to recession, but the average tariff rate is now roughly estimated to be closer to 30%.

Quote

"Needless to say, [a 20% tariff ...] would result in a significant recession," Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's, [told] Axios in an email.

[...] The Yale Budget Lab has estimated that a 20% tariff, with retaliation, could reduce the average household's purchasing power by up to $4,200.

[...] Even the manufacturing sector these tariffs were designed to help is hurting. [...]

[...] it would be the first time a president's policies directly caused [a recession].

Michael Strain, a conservative, writes in Project Syndicate: "Previously, it would have been unfathomable for a president — including Trump during his first term — to inflict so much harm on the economy deliberately."

https://www.axios.co...-liberation-day

Vietnam slashed their tariffs on the US to try to avoid getting hit with tariffs, but Trump still announced a 46% tariff on all goods from Vietnam. More tariffs still to come---on pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, lumber, etc.

Vietnam slashes duties on range of imports to head off US tariffs

Vietnam probably made the mistake of not realizing that Trump wants them to slash their tariffs after he announces massive Big Boy tariffs on them.

I sold the volatile half of my portfolio last week (BTC/ETH and individual stocks, not index funds). Going to put it in a CD Ladder, as I am hoping to buy a house in the next few years (lol yeah right). Rebalanced my index funds slightly more toward bonds. Not a moment too soon.

I should have sold more tbh but I was too risk averse.

I also just remembered I was planning to buy VIX calls 2 weeks ago and forgot. Aaand it's up 60% this week alone.

[Macros]

Rep. Melanie Stansbury laid it out fairly well with her "Elon Musk is running a scam" speech.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

There's some quantum sliver of hope that enough Republicans in Congress might join with the Democrats to form a simple majority to sign a discharge petition to vote on tariffs... and then vote against Trump. But if he refuses to comply with Congress---or with the courts---they almost certainly won't have enough votes in the Senate to remove him from office.

Quote

if House Speaker Mike Johnson won't bring Kaine's measure [to end tariffs on Canada, which passed in the Senate after four Republicans defected to their senses] for a vote, [Senator] Paul said he's going to try and convince more than half of the U.S. House of Representatives to bypass Johnson altogether – a so-called 'discharge petition' forces the speaker's hand.

[...] "Is there anything Congress can do on tariffs?" [...]

"Theoretically,

Spoiler

but, at this point, nothing's gonna happen," Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) [said.]

"Just because your party's in line with the administration?"

"We'll see how this plays out," Johnson said.

"Are you nervous, though, looking at our allies reacting?" [...]

"I don't really have anything else to do other than to listen to my constituents and convey what their experience is and what consequences are on them,"

'We've made a mistake': Trump's policies send Republicans into a tailspin - Raw Story

... but I wouldn't bet on it happening anytime soon.

Here's a relatively optimistic take though:

Quote

Imagine a mob boss were president of the United States. See, that wasn't very hard, was it?

Now, ask yourself, what kind of trade policy would a mob boss have? It's a useful exercise because it's one of the few ways to gain any understanding of the otherwise incomprehensible policies announced this week by [...] Trump.

The result is the question to ask when looking to understand a Trumpian action, big or small: What's in it for Trump? This is usually either a financial or business pay-off for him or his family, something that increases his power or is a manifestation of the pathologies that made him behave like a mob boss in the first place.

[...] because the tariffs are specific to each country and industry, he has the ability to gain leverage over each and every one. He can[...] "dial them up or down, like a thermostat." It's terrible, destructive economic policy. But as old school mob bossery goes, it could work.

https://www.thedaily...efuseor-accept/

In particular, I think it's overly optimistic to assume that Trump will settle for pay-offs to him or his family, though he'll probably lower most of the "reciprocal tariffs" partly in exchange for those. However he really seems committed to maintaining steep across the board tariffs. Maybe most will end up closer to 10% to 15% (for those that bend the knee and (spoilered for "explicitness")

Spoiler

suck the ass, smothered in the folds of its blubber...

).

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 04 April 2025 - 12:39 PM

[Cause]

I don’t know how we get out of this.

Just like Putin won’t/can’t end the war in Ukraine due to the sunk cost fallacy… the longer the war continues and the more Russia loses the less Putin can end the war without looking like a loser that rolled the dice on a risky gamble and left Vegas without even the shirt on his back.

Trump likewise has gone from promising to lower prices on day one to asking the American people to understand we are in a years long transition to a brighter future past the pain. He is right. Everyone else is wrong. Prices are rising (he doesn’t care he says). The stock market is tumbling (a president who craters stocks should be fired he once said). The starting point of the Tariffs are sky high, there is realistically no room to ramp up, only down but he is in fantasy land if he thinks others won’t retaliate. He is fighting a trade war on 60 front simultaneously. He wants to annex Canada, he wants Mexico to pay for the wall, sorry he wants other courtries to pay for the tarrifs. The demands are ridiculous. So what concession can he win to end them. What disaster can force his hand to end them without looking like a fool.

If we are not rich in 6 months, maybe the plan just needs a year. If not a year two? If not two he needs a third term to avoid jail and finally usher in the victory he promised.

[QuickTidal]

Cause, on 04 April 2025 - 12:49 PM, said:

I don’t know how we get out of this.

Just like Putin won’t/can’t end the war in Ukraine due to the sunk cost fallacy… the longer the war continues and the more Russia loses the less Putin can end the war without looking like a loser that rolled the dice on a risky gamble and left Vegas without even the shirt on his back.

Trump likewise has gone from promising to lower prices on day one to asking the American people to understand we are in a years long transition to a brighter future past the pain. He is right. Everyone else is wrong. Prices are rising (he doesn’t care he says). The stock market is tumbling (a president who craters stocks should be fired he once said). The starting point of the Tariffs are sky high, there is realistically no room to ramp up, only down but he is in fantasy land if he thinks others won’t retaliate. He is fighting a trade war on 60 front simultaneously. He wants to annex Canada, he wants Mexico to pay for the wall, sorry he wants other courtries to pay for the tarrifs. The demands are ridiculous. So what concession can he win to end them. What disaster can force his hand to end them without looking like a fool.

If we are not rich in 6 months, maybe the plan just needs a year. If not a year two? If not two he needs a third term to avoid jail and finally usher in the victory he promised.

You are watching both the traits of a cult writ large AND those who have taken advantage of that cult for power (Most of the republicans in Congress, or his hand picked judges ect.).

And we must apply the de-cult traits to this as well. Some people find their way out of that cult when SOMETHING that affects them snaps them out of it (r/conservative, for example, seems to by an large feel that it's the Tariffs, the stock market crashing, threats to annex sovereign ally nations, and mostly the third term talk...they were in lockstep with him until the last two months), but that small group of people aren't going to have some massive public road to Damascus moment...their disavowance of the leader and his cult will happen quietly and in a lot of cases they won't even TELL you out loud they've abandoned him...they will keep a mask up that they are still a part of it as they fear retribution from the other cultists AND the "I told you so's" from the sane side...it's also a mental break that their brains fight like it's an attack. But expecting the rest of them (en masse) to get out and realize he's ratfucking them with EVERY decision...it's simply not going to happen.


Hard facts: 909 people died at Jonestown at the behest of cult leader Jim Jones (the vacant majority from self-imbibed cyanide poisoning), and of the people who lived there only 85 survived. So out of just under 1000 people 8.5% of those people got out. Nearly 93% of them did EXACTLY what their leader suggested they do all the way up to and including killing themselves for him.


This is what the US is dealing with. The VAST majority of these Americans will NEVER get out of the cult, they will ride him all the way into poverty, illness, civil war, or death. THE VAST MAJORITY. This is not fear mongering, this is stats on Cults.


The only good news is that cult leaders CANNOT be swapped out. Once Trump is gone (from being voted out, impeached and removed, dies of his ill health, ect.) it's not like they can shove Vance, or Bannon or Jr, or anyone else into that slot and expect to hold onto that cultish base...it's never happened in the history of cults and it's been tried. So as a very thin silver lining...one day we will wake up to his obituary, and only THEN can the vast majority of MAGA start to heal and accept what they were involved in...but for most of them that will come over decades of their lives. Deprogramming regular cultists takes a long ass time and the key factor MUST be that the leader is not in their orbit or lives anymore...so until Trump is no longer around, these yahoos will continue to follow him. And it Deons't matter what he does...he could ask them to drink cynanide Kool-aid and they absolutely would. FFS he has them eating horse dewormer in doses that will strip the lining of their intestines and they will thank him for that...

[Tiste Simeon]

Absolutely spot on QT.

[QuickTidal]

South Korea just removed President Yoon Suk Yeol from office. People are literally celebrating in the streets.

See how it's done America?

[Mentalist]

China retaliated. trump is off golfing.

Will be some more fun once he comes back to DC

[Cause]

QuickTidal, on 04 April 2025 - 01:37 PM, said:

Cause, on 04 April 2025 - 12:49 PM, said:

I don’t know how we get out of this.

Just like Putin won’t/can’t end the war in Ukraine due to the sunk cost fallacy… the longer the war continues and the more Russia loses the less Putin can end the war without looking like a loser that rolled the dice on a risky gamble and left Vegas without even the shirt on his back.

Trump likewise has gone from promising to lower prices on day one to asking the American people to understand we are in a years long transition to a brighter future past the pain. He is right. Everyone else is wrong. Prices are rising (he doesn’t care he says). The stock market is tumbling (a president who craters stocks should be fired he once said). The starting point of the Tariffs are sky high, there is realistically no room to ramp up, only down but he is in fantasy land if he thinks others won’t retaliate. He is fighting a trade war on 60 front simultaneously. He wants to annex Canada, he wants Mexico to pay for the wall, sorry he wants other courtries to pay for the tarrifs. The demands are ridiculous. So what concession can he win to end them. What disaster can force his hand to end them without looking like a fool.

If we are not rich in 6 months, maybe the plan just needs a year. If not a year two? If not two he needs a third term to avoid jail and finally usher in the victory he promised.

You are watching both the traits of a cult writ large AND those who have taken advantage of that cult for power (Most of the republicans in Congress, or his hand picked judges ect.).

And we must apply the de-cult traits to this as well. Some people find their way out of that cult when SOMETHING that affects them snaps them out of it (r/conservative, for example, seems to by an large feel that it's the Tariffs, the stock market crashing, threats to annex sovereign ally nations, and mostly the third term talk...they were in lockstep with him until the last two months), but that small group of people aren't going to have some massive public road to Damascus moment...their disavowance of the leader and his cult will happen quietly and in a lot of cases they won't even TELL you out loud they've abandoned him...they will keep a mask up that they are still a part of it as they fear retribution from the other cultists AND the "I told you so's" from the sane side...it's also a mental break that their brains fight like it's an attack. But expecting the rest of them (en masse) to get out and realize he's ratfucking them with EVERY decision...it's simply not going to happen.


Hard facts: 909 people died at Jonestown at the behest of cult leader Jim Jones (the vacant majority from self-imbibed cyanide poisoning), and of the people who lived there only 85 survived. So out of just under 1000 people 8.5% of those people got out. Nearly 93% of them did EXACTLY what their leader suggested they do all the way up to and including killing themselves for him.


This is what the US is dealing with. The VAST majority of these Americans will NEVER get out of the cult, they will ride him all the way into poverty, illness, civil war, or death. THE VAST MAJORITY. This is not fear mongering, this is stats on Cults.


The only good news is that cult leaders CANNOT be swapped out. Once Trump is gone (from being voted out, impeached and removed, dies of his ill health, ect.) it's not like they can shove Vance, or Bannon or Jr, or anyone else into that slot and expect to hold onto that cultish base...it's never happened in the history of cults and it's been tried. So as a very thin silver lining...one day we will wake up to his obituary, and only THEN can the vast majority of MAGA start to heal and accept what they were involved in...but for most of them that will come over decades of their lives. Deprogramming regular cultists takes a long ass time and the key factor MUST be that the leader is not in their orbit or lives anymore...so until Trump is no longer around, these yahoos will continue to follow him. And it Deons't matter what he does...he could ask them to drink cynanide Kool-aid and they absolutely would. FFS he has them eating horse dewormer in doses that will strip the lining of their intestines and they will thank him for that...

Bringham Young

[Lady Bliss]

Mentalist, on 04 April 2025 - 02:22 PM, said:

China retaliated. trump is off golfing.

Will be some more fun once he comes back to DC

He is getting exactly what he wanted. Crush the poor and his “enemies” while still enjoying his posh life without worry of being being punished for his own crimes. Frankly I’m surprised that he hasn’t locked up Hillary yet.

This post has been edited by Lady Bliss: 04 April 2025 - 02:40 PM

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Mentalist, on 04 April 2025 - 02:22 PM, said:

China retaliated. trump is off golfing.

Will be some more fun once he comes back to DC

He also posted to Truth Social:

Quote

Trump tells investors 'my policies will never change' as markets plummet after his shock tariff announcements

[...] "TO THE MANY INVESTORS COMING INTO THE UNITED STATES AND INVESTING MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF MONEY, MY POLICIES WILL NEVER CHANGE. THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO GET RICH, RICHER THAN EVER BEFORE!!!"

https://finance.yaho...-140704607.html

Vertex Pharmaceuticals stock is up despite Chinese and European retaliatory tariffs... gold, surprisingly, is down over 2.5%. And one of my largest individual stock holdings, homebuilder DHI, was up over 3.5% for no obvious reason---wanted to get rid of most of that anyway so I sold some of it for more gold, which I should have more of. Then DHI dropped a bit, now only up about 2.4% today (so far).

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 04 April 2025 - 02:48 PM

[Chance]

Lady Bliss, on 04 April 2025 - 02:40 PM, said:

Mentalist, on 04 April 2025 - 02:22 PM, said:

China retaliated. trump is off golfing.

Will be some more fun once he comes back to DC

He is getting exactly what he wanted. Crush the poor and his “enemies” while still enjoying his posh life without worry of being being punished for his own crimes. Frankly I’m surprised that he hasn’t locked up Hillary yet.

It wouldn't surprise me if his own party backstabs him within a few days/weeks saying...yeah we aren't really in that much of an emergency situation so I don't think your presidential right to declare tariffs apply sorry.

Because that creature has cost his allies billions, lots of billions.

This post has been edited by Chance: 04 April 2025 - 08:32 PM

[Macros]

But some of his buddies are sneaking into occupy government contracts worth billions, and by some of his buddies I mean an unelected foreign national

[Chance]

Macros, on 05 April 2025 - 07:45 AM, said:

But some of his buddies are sneaking into occupy government contracts worth billions, and by some of his buddies I mean an unelected foreign national

Yeah

But there is no way the big tech firms can gain any form of contract that is equal to the losses in value. Not happening.

Just a guess but it would be interesting to know how this affects the net-value of senators and congressmen, as well as how many calls those officials will have over the next week of very annoyed donors and constituents.

This post has been edited by Chance: 05 April 2025 - 08:02 AM

[Garak]

Somehow I don't think they will do anything. They will keep following him. Because anyone with half a brain cell knew he'd do shit if he got in office again because he is a megalomaniac moron.

[QuickTidal]

Cause, on 04 April 2025 - 02:38 PM, said:

Bringham Young

Not a cult (been around longer than 100 years which legally disqualifies it], and associated with/is a branch of Christianity, so it’s not remotely the same thing…unless you want to comment on the wider concept of all religions being cults, which is a much broader topic that is less interesting to me. Mormonism is essentially swapping out head priests between smith and young….much different thing.

No cult has ever swapped out leaders because MOST cults end in either the leaders death WITH their followers, or they are thrown in jail like the Nxivm guy.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 05 April 2025 - 10:38 AM

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Garak, on 05 April 2025 - 08:28 AM, said:

Somehow I don't think they will do anything. They will keep following him. Because anyone with half a brain cell knew he'd do shit if he got in office again because he is a megalomaniac moron.

I would not be shocked to learn that the Trump administration shared their intentions so their allies could short the market---in some cases through intermediaries so it would be harder to trace back to them (and then Trump & "Friends" can be repaid in Trumpcoin). SEC under Trump's dominion ain't gonna do shit---except to his enemies, to whom it will probably start doing heinous ridiculous shit.

Trump's Treasury Secretary Bessent and Commerce Secretary Lutnick are Wall Street people... they understood what would almost certainly happen.

My CAOS has been doing well, better than bonds, even though the market hasn't gone down 25% yet. Soon, perhaps... the trouble with CAOS is that in slowly declining bear markets it has historically tended to go down, even though they aim for it to be uncorrelated with equities when the market isn't crashing.

But there's some good news for the future:

Quote

Tariff-fueled downturn shouldn't impact Big Tech's AI spending

[...] the MAG 7, some of the largest software companies, they actually have the opportunity to look at this drawdown as a moment to double down on R&D and position themselves knowing that AI is going to be the product that will accelerate coming out of this.

They're not certain of when they're going to come out of this, but they basically told me the CAPEX is locked in. And so, the near term on sort of these CAPEX plays for big AI build outs seems to be pretty secure.

https://finance.yaho...-170000182.html

Granted, "the near term" is a key qualifier...

amphibian, on 03 April 2025 - 12:53 PM, said:

The people making the list used AI, which promptly did some stupid stuff and because the people are also stupid, they just went with it. I am not joking when I say the numbers and country pulls are functionally made up garbage.

https://www.nytimes....alculation.html

AI is garbage and so are the people using it here.

The article you cite doesn't mention AI (or related terms) at all. Neither does the White House paper explaining their methodology, and neither do the citations in the footnotes.

A Guardian article did mention the speculation that they used AI---and helpfully linked to a source. It turns out that it really is just speculation by Twitter users:

Quote

Economist James Surowiecki quickly reverse-engineered a possible explanation for the tariff pricing. He found you could recreate each of the White House's numbers by simply taking a given country's trade deficit with the US and dividing it by their total exports to the US. Halve that number, and you get a ready-to-use "discounted reciprocal tariff." The White House objected to this claim and published the formula it says that it used, but as Politico points out, the formula looks like a dressed-up version of Surowiecki's method.

A number of X users have realized that if you ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, or Grok for an "easy" way to solve trade deficits and put the US on "an even playing field", they'll give you a version of this "deficit divided by exports" formula with remarkable consistency. The Verge tested this [...] asking chatbots for "an easy way for the US to calculate tariffs that should be imposed on other countries to balance bilateral trade deficits between the US and each of its trading partners, with the goal of driving bilateral trade deficits to zero." All four platforms gave us the same fundamental suggestion.

There is some variation. Grok and Claude specifically suggested halving the tariff figure to generate what Grok calls a "reasonable" result, much like Trump's "discount" idea. [...]

[...] We don't know that Trump's team turned to an AI tool to generate global trade policy on the fly. Since chatbots are regurgitating information from training data, it's also not clear how they arrived at this particular formula.

https://www.theverge...ini-claude-grok

But this is an obvious answer---an absurdly oversimplified answer, of course, but still a very obvious one. "For most complex problems, there is a solution that is simple, obvious, and wrong." In this case, obviously wrong, because of how much it's leaving out.

One irony is that it's based on the assumption that any trade imbalance must be the result of "unfair" practices---the same logic of "equity" that they demonize in the context of racial and gender equity (for treating "inequality of outcomes" as necessarily being a consequence of an unfair system). OTOH it's formally consistent with the MAGA belief that if Trump loses an election then the other side must have cheated. Or more generally: any legal or economic result which doesn't benefit Trump is unfair, terrible, and very wrong.

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 05 April 2025 - 11:42 AM

[Mentalist]

The EU's proposed response is to tax American Big Tech.
Which may put a dent in those plans.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Mentalist, on 05 April 2025 - 06:22 PM, said:

The EU's proposed response is to tax American Big Tech.
Which may put a dent in those plans.

But the Mag 7 and some of the big software companies are sitting on huge money piles---probably large enough to cover their AI capex commitments for the near term---and they think that AI is the way to get out of the bear market. And the way to save money in net by reducing opex.

In terms of individual investors in the near term it's probably better to invest in US utility companies that benefit from AI capex commitments---for example Vistra, Dominion, NextEra, NRG. Most of the rest of the market will probably keep dropping substantially, at least for the next few weeks. But the market can behave unpredictably... and of course so can Trump.

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 05 April 2025 - 08:07 PM

[Maark Abbott]

Cause, on 04 April 2025 - 12:49 PM, said:

I don't know how we get out of this.

Small tumulus or other earthen mound covered in basic plant matter.

I wish that was more of a joke than it is, but here we are.