Something for Your Espresso – Long Fixed Income and Chill?
Morning.
What a day yesterday. It didn’t take more than 45 minutes after one of Trump’s economic advisors, Kevin Hassett, more or less “promised” markets that tariffs would come no earlier than early April—as they were awaiting a research paper, due April 1, to assess their impact on prices and the US economy—before Trump went rogue through his own channels, announcing another 10% tariff on China while moving forward the tariffs on Canada and Mexico to early March (despite postponing them just days ago).
It’s almost impossible to trade such an environment in assets that are highly sensitive to these developments. While US equities have so far been shielded from tariff announcements (and the DOGE narrative), likely because markets struggle to fully price in tariffs before they appear in economic data, it now appears that markets are starting to discount the impact on US growth. This explains the fairly nasty price action during US trading sessions this week.
It’s incredibly tough to trade the current tariff environment, as there is—as we have alluded to before—zero edge in trying to predict the next steps of Trump and his administration. When zooming out, the best macro play is simply to buy bonds and go home.
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