Markets in 2 Minutes: What to Make of Latest China Tariff Talk

Let me start with what’s been going on in the US Near records on the SP yesterday interesting survey of investors says 52% expect the SP to go higher, by 10 percent, 48% they expect it to go lower. So the market seemingly quite divided. What do you make of where we are at this point? Yeah, pretty split. But if you feel that momentum coming back into the market, you see the way that things are looking right now, then it might give you a little bit more confidence. We’re within 1% of a record high. The data is interesting, right? The Citigroup economic surprise index turned negative, but maybe that’s not such a bad thing for equities given where we are in that sort of bad news can be good news for markets kind of pricing dynamic. And if people are looking for signs in the data, that will give the Fed reassurance that it can begin cutting later in the year. Then maybe that all plays into a better looking picture for the market. It also seems that on the whole. The earnings have come out reasonably good, OK. Expectations weren’t that high, but nevertheless, the market seems to be enjoying that kind of ride. So as we come out of earnings season, it does feel like there’s a little bit of momentum back behind us. OK. And talking about momentum heading into next week, a really interesting Bloomberg scoop around around China in the US and relationships there. At the suggestion that President Biden is very close to deciding on further tariffs on an assortment of Chinese products, this is already having an impact on markets to some degree. What are you watching, Paul? Yeah. So I I mean I I think it’s really interesting. There’s going to be everybody’s expecting plenty of anti China rhetoric ramping up into the election cycle and I think that the market is to some extent already immune to that. I was talking to our stocks team leader here. He was saying investors now are seeing as part and parcel of investing in China those risks. They’re aware of them, they know what’s coming or what’s likely and how to deal with it and a lot of it is already in the price. That said, you know. The The threat of increasing tariffs is not going to be great for the companies overall. The argy bargy that’s going on with Europe over exports as well seems to seems to still be pretty high. After she’s chip it doesn’t seem to have mended an awful lot, so that is something that the market is going to have to continue to keep on top of looking forwards into the future.