For God’s sake, all of you on the right or the left, can the hysteria. Take a deep breath. Quit hyperventilating.
The weekend is upon us. I seldom drink, but feel free to down my share. Watch the Final Four men’s basketball games to escape your unhappiness.
Go for a walk. Read a book. Take the family out to dinner. Do something, anything, except to obsess over declines in investment or retirement accounts — drops that mean little unless you absolutely, positively, need all the money tomorrow if not sooner.
Hell, early Friday night before writing this I watched a couple of really old movies on Turner Classic Movies just to get away from overhyped types on the business channels I ordinarily like to watch.
That would include know-it-alls such as Jim Cramer, who conveniently forgets about telling us in a previous financial market meltdown – one with legitimate economic roots – that it was safe to hold the Bear Stearns investment firm about five days before it was bailed out for about 1/30th of its price when Cramer was so sure all was well.
Somehow, despite this and other gaffes, Cramer remains a prominent horse in the CNBC stable.
Many consider the omnipresent Cramer a clown and I’m not going to argue.
If you’ve been paying any attention at all, you should be as unshocked by the financial markets’ reaction to Donald Trump’s tariff Liberation Day, as by Joe Biden’s debate meltdown that set loose the coup to remove him as the Democrat candidate in the past election.
A month ago, March 4, I wrote on this blog under the headline “Trump Cures Won’t Be Without Pain,” likening what Trump was about to do to cure our trade problem to chemotherapy.
Now, people seem shocked, shocked I tell you, that the financial markets are throwing hissy fits and trantrums because multinational companies won’t be able to continue to generate 30 percent rates of return by paying foreign serfs incredibly low pay to produce products for less than American workers can or will.
China, which loves to bluster, responded to Trump’s tariffs with tariffs of its own. Let’s see who can win that battle over time.
Other nations, and artificial amalgamations of such designed often to present a united economic challenge to the U.S., are reported to be talking about dropping their tariffs on our products to relieve Trump’s reciprocal tariffs.
I believe that in a matter of months (maybe many months), this all comes out in the wash. Until then, we could get more of this unsettling price action of recent days, so grow a pair.
Repeat, the rise and fall of portfolio numbers is part of the investment game. It is fluctuation and only matters if you are so moronic as to be overleveraged enough to receive margin calls you cannot satisfy.
If you own your stocks, bonds, commodities outright, you have not “lost” money in recent days, you’ve merely experienced a decline in their price and your net worth.
If you sell at these depressed prices and lock in the loss, then you have lost money; lit it up with a match and tossed it out the car window.
Otherwise, it only matters if you are such a pessimist that you think the nation as we know it is at the end of the line economically due to Trump. Hell, if the Democrats weren’t having a cast of socialists lining up to replace Trump in 2028, one could argue his successor could be counted on to right the ship he is being accused of torpedoing with his tariffs.
The point is, there have been dislocations much worse than this, just since 2000, and always the markets and the economy are stronger down the line, hitting higher highs.
A final word to the MAGA types and Republicans already going squishy on this. I had a considerable drawdown in my financial picture over the past two days and I was buying on the decline. I’m retired and I’m not horrified, terrified, or turning on Trump.
This is what you signed up for by voting for Trump. It’s not just the Washington deep state that sees cleaning up the Swamp as their existential problem. It’s the financial people, too, who see a threat to their cushy lifestyles.
If you didn’t understand that those in the existing culture of ridiculously easy money and inflated asset prices were going to act like so many petulant children when the candy was taken away, you were naive in the extreme.
In view of the fact I’ve been reading reports today that Trump is not about to back down, we should see more of this.
Again, I invoke the chemotherapy analogy. It’s going to be painful. You’re going to feel like throwing up, or maybe you already have tossed your cookies. But, if you can stick it out, the end will make it all worthwhile.
Try to remember that between tantrums.
Sam Ross Jr's site 