After the appalling news about Charlie Kirk, it's worth rereading Alistair Cook's great reportage from the scene of RFK's assassination in 1968. The parallels are close, and Cook's wisdom still relevant:
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/a...

Polymarket thinks Cardinal Parolin is the new Pope. Interesting to see if the bettors are right.

The S&P 500 in gold terms has almost taken out its Covid low;

The retreat from US exceptionalism is taking another leg down; the S&P has now shed all of its gains relative to the rest of the world since January 2024. (Europe is closed today, which exaggerates the move, but it's an important move down)

The latest BofA survey of global fund managers, carried out just after Liberation Day, is remarkable. Suddenly, half of the big money managers in the survey think the world economy is heading for a hard landing:

In other circumstances, the March CPI would be hailed as a major breakthrough on inflation. Powell's favored "Supercore" (Core Services Minus Shelter) started the year above 4%. It's now below 3%

This is how the S&P just reacted to the Trump Truth Social post saying he's delaying a lot of the tariffs. Possibly the single most lucrative social media post of all time:

The meme that keeps on giving:

I’m going to say the Nasdaq has been volatile so far this morning….

Meanwhile WTI Crude has started trading by dropping through $60 for the first time in four years.

Traders have had a weekend to sit back and think through whether they overreacted to the Trump tariffs last week, and now the S&P 500 futures market has reopened. They're down another 4.3% at the open, now down more than 15% since the announcement. Long week ahead everyone...

The Nasdaq Composite is now down 5.3% on course for its worst day in 5 years (since the worst of the pandemic meltdown). We should soon have some clarity on whether there's a Trump Put:

Scott Bessent made clear that he had three aims - lower 10-year bond yields, a weaker dollar, and cheaper oil. Whether anyone would have advised the administration to get there this way is a question, but they've got what they want - this is the 10-yr Tsy, the dollar and WTI Crude since the election

This is what the German election seems to come down to: if the small left-wing party BSW can't reach 5%, a 2-party CDU/SPD coalition can and probably will happen. If BSW tops 5%, it can't. And prediction markets seem now to think the BSW can get above 5%:

2-year inflation breakevens' moves over the last two days, and particularly their reaction to news of the postponement of tariffs on Mexico, shows how important #tariffs are perceived to be for #inflation prospects:

Sheinbaum's announcement that tariffs have been postponed for a month seems to have helped the peso:

In early trading, the US dollar is on course for its biggest daily jump against the Canadian dollar since the pandemic. And the tariffs haven't even started yet. It's going to be a long day....

Nvidia's market cap drop today is now about $555 billion. (The whole of Exxon is worth ($477 billion). Or alternatively, Nvidia is back to where it was in October:

Immediate reaction to the #FOMC announcement shows sharp rise in the fed funds rate penciled in for the end of next year - no longer clear it will get down to 4%: