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 Warm-Up
- Markets making some of the worst moves in decades
- Billionaires - all in on Trump lost billions...
- WAIT !!!!!! Maybe a 90-day pause on Tariffs now...Or Not...
- More finesse, less sledge hammer?

Markets
- Key Reversal Indicator - 1st Green cluster bottom on Monday.. Oversold?
- Stock markets slammed
- President Trump discussing stocks
- Economic Pissing Match - Even more tariffs, or bluffs
- VIX HITS 60!

-- A Quick Poem - Green Eggs and Navarro
--- One of the gents that responded to Vietnam's desire to have zero tariffs as "not enough"

DAX on Monday and other Markets
- Opened up down 10% - clawed back a bunch by end of the day
- European stocks down 1.5% YTD 2024
- US Stock bearing the brunt of the move
- Hong Kong (after being closed Friday) - closed Monday DOWN 13%!
- Monday in Japan, Markets halted, futures trading suspended as Nikkei and Topix plunge more than 5%
--- Follow up - then up 6% the next day
- Monday YTD US Markets:

Heads Up - Just in...
- Tuesday at 12:30PM
- 'White House Press Secretary says 104% additional tariffs went into effect at noon eastern time because China has not removed it's retaliation. The 104% additional tariff will be collected starting tomorrow April 9th' 
-Markets were trying to right themselves - up big to start the day - then this headline....
- What if  - China comes back at 200%?

More:
- Tuesday afternoon : White House Secretary Karoline Leavitt answers questions on trade at briefing: President Trump not considering delay in tariffs that are due to go into effect tomorrow at 12:01 AM
- Where is the negotiation? Seems like a pissing match or bluff with unlimited funds.

If you are interested
- Rand Paul making all sorts of sense this morning
- Trades are win-win. Trade does not mean that one side has to win and one lose.
- https://www.cnbc.com/video/2025/04/08/sen-rand-paul-on-trump-tariffs-trade-is-an-integral-part-of-capitalism.html

Stupid
- Taiwan's top financial regulator said on Sunday it will impose temporary curbs on short-selling of shares to help deal with potential market turmoil from U.S. President Donald Trump's new import tariffs, and will take other steps as needed.
- Taiwan's Financial Supervisory Commission said in a statement it would limit the number of shares that can be sold short and raise the minimum short-selling margin ratio to 130% from 90%, starting from Monday and lasting until Friday.
- We have seen how this plays out in the past.

More references to bluffing
- "I think it was a big mistake, this Chinese escalation, because they're playing with a pair of twos," Bessent said during an interview on CNBC's "Squawk Box." "What do we lose by the Chinese raising tariffs on us? We export one-fifth to them of what they export to us, so that is a losing hand for them."

VIX
- Hits 60 on Monday - then backs off to 45
- Not often we see a run like that.
- Still at 45 shows big concerned about near-term volatility.
--- S&P 500 top to bottom 7% move today - VIX was at 37 - back to 52

BREAK - IBKR

Billionaires losing $$
- Do we feel bad?
- Sample of losses on Liberation Day
- Zuck lost $18B
- Bezos lost $15B

What?
- Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says Americans looking to retire aren’t concerned about day-to-day markets, dismisses concerns about a potential recession
- During an interview with NBC News' "Meet the Press," Bessent called it a "false narrative" that Americans who are close to retiring may be reticent to do so after their retirement savings may have dropped this week due to the stock market downturn.
- Remember who this is saying this:
-----Bessent played a key role in currency and fixed income markets, notably being part of the team that profited over $1 billion from the 1992 UK sterling crisis
- Bessent was a partner at Soros Fund Management

Meanwhile
- Global hedge funds and levered exchange-traded funds (ETFs) dumped more than $40 billion of stocks at a breakneck pace, growing increasingly bearish after President Donald Trump's shock announcement of harsher-than-expected global tariffs, according to bank notes to clients on Friday.
- Since when Trump boosted tariff barriers to their highest level in more than a century, S&P 500 companies have lost over $4 trillion in stock market value.
- Total stock market losses in US more than 9 TRILLION

Trump Flip-Flop? Or Not?
- President Donald Trump said Sunday evening that he is not intentionally engineering the ongoing stock market sell-off, but said little to try and dissuade it.
- "I don't want anything to go down, but sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something," Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One Sunday night when asked about the markets.
- Report that President Trump is considering 90 day pause in tariffs except for China
--- Market went nuts (UP) - from down 3% to up 3% in minutes - Initially White House did not confirm the report
---- What can we learn from this though?
------ A slower more deliberate plan could be beneficial - still do what you are doing, a but more surgical, less sledge-hammer policy making - Bully tactics
- Businesses - Business groups planning to challenge President Trump's tariff authority in the courts

Crypto Currencies
- Bitcoin fell below the $79,000 level as investors braced for more financial market volatility after U.S. equities suffered their worst decline since 2020 on the rollout of President Donald Trump's restrictive global tariffs.
- Etherium is down 60% YTD and much over the past several weeks

Exploding Sex Toys Plot
- Pillows, packed into the parcels with the cosmetics and sex toys, contained hidden homemade incendiary devices made of a cocktail of chemicals including highly reactive magnesium, according to the person familiar with the case who provided the most granular account yet of the alleged plot.
- Fake Cosmetics and sex toys filled with homemade explosives
- European security chiefs made the parcel fires public in October, describing them as part of a "hybrid war" being waged by Russia to destabilize the functioning of countries that support Ukraine, involving tactics like arson and cyberattacks.

Some better news?
- The U.S. Senate approved a Republican budget blueprint early on Saturday that aims to extend trillions of dollars worth of President Donald Trump's 2017 tax cuts and sharply reduce government spending.
- Non-partisan analysts say the measure, if enacted, would add about $5.7 trillion to the federal government's debt over the next decade. Senate Republicans contend the cost is $1.5 trillion, saying that the effects of extending existing tax policy that was scheduled to expire at the end of this year should not be counted in the measure's cost.
- So this is not a tax cut, it is a continuation or else we get higher taxes.

Inside Scoop
- Hearing that some of the biggest private equity players are marking down their real-estate assets by 25% and that is causing some issues
- Remember Private Equity is supposed to be the best for the long haul.

Lots of Push Back from Hedge Fund Dudes
- Billionaire investor Bill Ackman called for a 90-day "time-out" on President Donald Trump's reciprocal tariffs, warning of the United States bringing forth a "self-induced, economic nuclear winter."

 

 

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FED AND CRYPTO LIMERICKS

About - Peter Navarro (AI generated)

I do not like him, Sam-I-Am,
I do not trust his market jam.
I do not like his tariff fight,
It makes the numbers look less bright.
I would not take his grand advice,
For trade wars come at quite the price.
I do not like his gloomy spin,
It warps the facts deep down within.
I will not buy what he has sold,
His forecasts seem a bit too bold.
I do not like him here or there,
His views just float on empty air.
So take those eggs—green as they stand,
And let them rest in someone’s hand.
For I do not like him, Sam-I-Am,
Not with green eggs, nor with that ham!