Trump tweets toy with stocks as trade bluster shakes Wall Street
Donald Trump’s got the stock market on a string, but investors are less sure of the game he’s playing.
The Republican president’s renewed ramblings on trade dominated U.S. equity markets this week, with a tweet-induced swoon on Friday leaving the S&P 500 Index 1.4 percent lower than where it started on Monday. The gauge swung wildly, notching four moves of at least 1 percent in the five days, and the Cboe Volatility Index spiked above 20, nearly double its level for the past year.
All of which has dented Trump’s reputation as the stock market president.
“It’s exhausting, it’s draining for a lot of people,” Henry Peabody, a Boston-based portfolio manager at Eaton Vance Management, said by phone. “The fashion by which it’s done is certainly unorthodox.”
Trump’s rattled markets before with his tweets, with blasts on everything from the size of his nuclear button to the fate of Nafta raising investor anxiety. But those episodes passed quickly during his first year on the job, when a steady stream of pro-business policies smoothed any market dents.
Now, the White House is tackling areas where there’s far less consensus support from Wall Street. For example, on Friday Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin acknowledged there’s “a level of risk” that the tariff dispute between the U.S. and China will erupt into a full-scale trade war -- something investors clearly don’t want.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/savingandinvesting/trump-tweets-toy-with-stocks-as-trade-bluster-shakes-wall-street/ar-AAvz7CG?li=BBnbfcN
Face it. He's enjoying the shit out of all this.
