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@theMarket: The Tariff War Begins
By Bill Schmick,
01:50PM / Friday, March 28, 2025
On April 2, Donald Trump has threatened to levy tariffs on several nations. This is in addition to the tariffs he has already imposed on China, Mexico, Canada, and now global auto producers. The question is whether the "if" in tariffs is still possible.   No, it isn't. The president is making good on his campaign promises to create an even playing field between the U.S. and our trading partners. Steel, aluminum, and the global auto tariffs he announced Wednesday evening are only the beginning.   Unlike his first term, this time around his tariff initiatives will be "extensive, explicit and enforced," as one hedge fund manager told me.

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@theMarket: Fed No Longer in the Driver's Seat
By Bill Schmick,
03:25PM / Friday, March 21, 2025
This week, the Federal Reserve Bank hiked its inflation forecast and reduced the growth target for the economy this year. Despite this news, traders termed the March FOMC meeting a "dovish pause," although it did not help the stock market.   The upshot of Chairman Jerome Powell's Q&A session on Wednesday afternoon after the FOMC meeting was that as far as the future is concerned, the Fed would need to wait and see just like the rest of us. In the meantime, the bank decided to slow its quantitative tightening program. That was interpreted as dovish by most Fed watchers since it does add liquidity to the credit markets.   Powell did say tariffs

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@theMarket: The Markets' Flash Correction
By Bill Schmick,
03:17PM / Friday, March 14, 2025
The market's decline has been one of the fastest in history. The fall has been fueled by the Trump administration's economic policies. The question most investors are wrestling with is what to do about it.   Looking back on this period in a year or two, I guarantee that most investors will have trouble remembering exactly what happened. There is nothing abnormal in this decline thus far except its speed. It is a simple garden variety pullback, which occurs at least once a year if not more. It is the price of doing business for equity investors and savers with tax-deferred retirement accounts.   Given that, the decline is probably a good thing for an

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@theMarket: Tariff Talk Trashes Stocks as Stagflation Fears Rise
By Bill Schmick,
04:20PM / Friday, March 07, 2025
The latest worry to plague Wall Street is lower growth and rising inflation. What is worse, the tariff war that President Trump insists will lead to a "golden age" for America is proving to be a nightmare for financial markets.   "There will be a little disturbance, but we are OK with that," the president admitted Tuesday evening in his address to Congress. His mission that night was to sell America on his vision of a new economy of high tariffs, low immigration, low taxes, and low regulation. Main Street is buying that message, with approval ratings of almost 70 percent of those who watched the address. Unfortunately, global financial markets are not so

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@theMarket: A growth scare adds another worry to the market mix
By Bill Schmick,
03:56PM / Friday, February 28, 2025
Tariff fears, inflation worries, and now, an economic growth scare, have conspired to sour moods in the markets. The Trump trade has all but disappeared and in its place, investors are looking for defensive areas to protect capital.   Uncertainty is the bane of any market's existence and right now that element is in abundance. This week we have seen concerns over inflation take a back seat to an even greater worry—a slowing economy. It began with last week's retail sales number. The data was weaker than many expected as consumers pulled back on their discretionary spending.   That could have been explained away as simply a bout of buying fatigue

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