Summary
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick blamed Biden for weak economic data, citing February’s 77,000 job gain (vs. 186,000 in January), a 7-point drop in consumer confidence, and the Atlanta Fed’s Q1 GDP forecast falling from +2.3% to -2.8%.
He dismissed concerns over Trump’s tariffs on Canada and Mexico and proposed excluding government spending from GDP, a move criticized by economists.
The Dow fell 1,300 points in two days, signaling investor uncertainty.
The administration also disbanded economic advisory committees, raising concerns about data transparency and policy direction.
They wanna remove govt spending from GDP calculations to hide how bad shits gonna get.
Guess what that level of asinine obvious Jedi hand wave bullshit is gonna do?
Make everyone scared to invest scared to spend. We’re in for a recession for sure.
I just massively shifted my retirement accounts from being ~80%/20% US/international stocks to more like 50/50. I’m increasingly doubting myself and thinking I ought to shift the ratio even more.
Honestly what countries are you betting on?
I feel like literally everyone is going to lose big in this.
I’m thinking gold, thinking puts on markets I believe to be currently overvalued that are bound to suffer…
I’m pretty skeptical about the notion of being able to time the market in general, so changing my asset balance at all based on external factors (i.e. not my age-based glide path or whatever) takes some pretty extraordinary circumstances re: systematic and sovereign risk. Frankly, weird stuff like gold and options have been outside my scope of contemplation up to this point. Maybe I should revisit that.
Anyway, concretely, what I did was just exchange a bunch of VTSAX for VTIAX. I don’t know what the country breakdown of VTIAX is, and I honestly don’t want to care (although I acknowledge I may be forced to, at some point).
Depression.
Bigly Depression.