At the time of writing, the VIX volatility index is up 27% over the past five days, its highest since April last year when the Oval Office announced sweeping tariffs on every nation on the planet. While markets in the U.S. are yet to have the opportunity to react to the news after being closed for the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, assets in Europe are looking pale.
Germany’s DAX is down 1.57% at the time of writing, London’s FTSE is down 1.4%, and France’s CAC 40 is down 1.2%. Asia is similarly queasy. Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 is down 1.11%, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index is down 0.29%. A preview for U.S. trading comes in the form of futures, with the S&P 500 trending down 1.75% at the time of writing.
However, the damage could have been worse: Investors don’t even need to cast their minds back a year for inspiration. Markets plummeted following Trump’s Rose Garden address on April 2, his so-called Liberation Day, despite the fact many of his threatened tariffs were delayed within a matter of days. And so the “TACO” trade was born: Trump Always Chickens Out.
“The market has been burnt before by overreacting to tariff threats,” Reid continued. “Obviously, there was Liberation Day but more recently Trump’s escalation with China in October prompted a -2.71% decline for the S&P 500 on that day, before he then met with Xi and the trade truce was extended by a year.”
Over at UBS, chief economist Paul Donovan described a rational market: “Investors and the U.S. administration are likely to keep focus on the U.S. bond market, which weakened modestly in the wake of Trump’s latest tariff threats. The implications of additional tariffs are more U.S. inflation pressures and a further erosion of the USD’s status as a reserve currency. So far, bond investors do not seem to be taking the threats too seriously.”
Markets also “dismissed” another barb from Trump aimed at French President Macron, over duties levied on champagne and Bordeaux if the European leader refuses to cough up $1 billion to join the Board of Peace for Gaza.
