April 3, 2025 | Daily JAM, Special Reports, Volatility |
Today the Standard & Poor’s 500 fell 4.25%, dropping into a correction. The NASDAQ Composite dropped 5.43%, also into a correction. The small cap Russell 2000 lost 6.59%. We don’t have to search for the cause of todays drop: yesterday President Donald Trump announced tariffs with a global minimum rate of 10% and rates on individual U.S. trading partners that included a 20% tariff on the European Union and an additional 34% tariff on Chinese goods. The fear is that the tariff increases will set off a global trade war of retaliation, and that the tariffs will push the United States into either a recession or stagflation. Take your pick about which to fear more. So what do you do NOW? That’s the topic of this Emergency Special Report.
April 3, 2025 | Daily JAM |
So today U.S. stocks are tumbling after President Trump’s tariff announcement yesterday. What do you do now?
April 3, 2025 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing, Short Term, Volatility |
After weeks of trying to believe that President Donald Trump wasn’t serious about imposing massive tariffs on the rest of the world, Wall Street heard president Trump do exactly that from the Rose Garden yesterday. And today stocks opened down biggly. At 11:20 a.m. New York time, the Standard & Poor’s 500 was down 4.21%. The NASDAQ Composite and the NASDAQ 100 were lower by 5.24% and 4.64%, respectively. The small cap Russell 2000 had tumbled 4.63%. Shares of Apple (AAPL) were down 8.64%. Nike (NKE) was off 11.79%. Nvidia (NVDA) was lower by 6.66%. Why the huge drop?
April 2, 2025 | AAPL, Daily JAM, Morning Briefing, NKE, WMT |
My first take away from President Donald Trump’s Rose Garden speech on his new global reciprocal tariff plan is that it worse than expected. In some cases shockingly worse.
April 2, 2025 | Daily JAM, Videos |
Today’s video is Why the Fed is Almost Certain to be Wrong. Blame it in lags. Lags make economic forecasting really difficult at the best of times. How long does it take policies like tariffs and tax cuts to actually affect the economy and show up in the data? Right now, we’re dealing with lags from a tariffs that will eventually raise consumer prices. We don’t know when this will hit people in the wallet and really start to affect the economy as a whole. Another problem is the upcoming Trump tax cuts. This will be stimulative to the economy and the Fed may have to look at raising rates again in effort to slow more inflation. If, however, the tariffs slow the economy enough to balance out the stimulative effect of the tax cuts, the Fed would look at lowering rates. There’s really little that monetary policy can do about tariff-caused price increases. White House accounting says the tariffs and tax cuts will balance each other, but it’s tough to say if the money coming out of consumer pockets are the same pockets benefiting from the tax cuts. All this to say, the Fed remains between a rock and a hard place, and has little chance of getting this right and will almost certaInly make a mistake. The question is, How big will the mistake be?
April 1, 2025 | AAPL, Daily JAM |
By itself, the display stand in the main Vodafone store in Venice doesn’t prove much. But with the context of European anger at U.S tariffs and consumer boycott of U.S. goods in countries like Denmark, I found the empty rack fro Apple’s iPhone and the big display of phones from China’s Xiaomi, well, suggestive.
March 30, 2025 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
It’s not clear who White House advisor Peter Navarro speaks for but on Sunday he spoke up loudly for more tariffs. On Fox News Navarro claimed Sunday that President Donald Trump’s new tariffs would raise more than $6 trillion in federal revenue over the next decade. Exactly why that’s a good idea wasn’t clear from Navarro’s appearance since it would amount to the largest peacetime tax hike in modern U.S. history.
March 30, 2025 | Daily JAM, FXY, Perfect Five-ETFs, Short Term, UUP |
On Monday, March 31, I will sell the Invesco DB U.S. Dollar Index BullishFund ETF (UUP) out of the Perfect 5 ETF Portfolio and replace it with the Invesco CurrencyShares Japanese Yen ETF (FXY). I will leave the portfolio weighting at 25%. The yen ETF is up 5.32% in the last three months as of the close on March 28. It charges a 0.40% expense ratio.
March 29, 2025 | Daily JAM, Short Term |
Wall Street is, clearly, afraid that President Donald Trump’s tariffs are going to significantly slow the U.S. economy. Those fears drove the Standard & Poor’s 500 down another 1.97% on Friday and sent the NASDAQ Composite down 2.70%. But I think that there’s still a large percentage of investors who think the tariffs won’t be as bad as their advance press suggests, either because they believe they’re simply negotiating ploys or because President Trump has history of barking worse than he bites. Frankly, I think those investors are wrong.
March 28, 2025 | Daily JAM |
The next big round of Trump tariffs and the March jobs numbers will be the big events of the week.
March 26, 2025 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
President Donald Trump will announce auto tariffs on Wednesday afternoon, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said during a briefing with reporters at the White House.
Details of the tariffs are unclear–who following White House “policy” on tariffs is surprised at that? Stock markets fell on news. The Standard & Poor’s 500 closed down 1.12%. The NASDAQ Composite dropped 2.04%.
March 24, 2025 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
President Donald Trump said on Monday that any country that buys oil or gas from Venezuela will pay a 25% tariff on exports to the United States.
This “secondary tariff” will take effect on April 2, the president announced in a Truth Social post.
