This is not intended to turn into a political flame war, though doubtless it will become one. To those of you who say that politics shouldn't be discussed on an investing forum, I say: If you think politics and the market are divorced from each other, then you don't understand either.
The many issues with the Trump administration are too numerous to be mentioned here. Yesterday alone, Donald Trump blindsided the entire world, not to mention his own administration, with his announcement about the steel and aluminum tariffs. Apparently his own economic adviser was begging him not to do this. He did it anyway.
His White House has seen an epic turnover of senior staff. Some of those same staff have been indicted by Bob Mueller. More indictments are certainly to come.
The word on the street this morning is that Gates has flipped on Trump himself. It's entirely possible that Trump will be criminally indicted: for collusion, for money laundering, who knows. Don't believe me? That's fine. You still can't deny that the very fact that the possibility is being discussed is destabilizing.
I don't care where you stand on Trump politically. We are at the point where we can no longer deny that things are becoming chaotic, and there has never been a time in history when a chaotic government has been good for a market. It's pretty clear that things are only going to get more chaotic in the short term. Nobody has the slightest idea what's going to happen in the long term.
So, how to play this? Let's discuss sanely and rationally like the intelligent people we are, so that we can help each other get through this. I realize many of you are only interested in holding long term and for you this conversation might not be of as much interest. Myself, though I do hold a few long-term equities, I am also a swing trader of equities and options, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who is feeling a little pain right now.
Submitted March 02, 2018 at 06:09AM by AmbivalentFanatic http://ift.tt/2FK7hOW
