It’s fair to say that last weekend’s POTUS Tweetfest was unhelpful to a rapidly deteriorating Global Economy.
For those who missed it, here’s a summary below, courtesy of Zerohedge:
“Jerome Powell’s Jackson Hole speech was supposed to be the most important event of an otherwise sleepy, August day, after which traders could quietly exit for the rest of the day and commence drinking. It did not quite work out that way.
Not only did Powell’s speech barely make the top 3 most important events, but Friday ended up being an exercise in surreal market news flow, and one of the biggest drops of 2019 to boot.
With a few hours left before Jackson Hole, as traders were getting ready to trade Powell’s Jackson Hole speech which was a big dud, and did not reveal anything new (as even Trump figured out when he blasted the Fed chief slamming “As usual, the Fed did NOTHING!” and asking “who is our bigger enemy, Jay Powell or Chairman Xi?”), China shocked the market by unveiling that it would retaliate by slapping 10% tariffs on another $75BN in US imports, which sent stocks sharply lower at first. Then, Powell’s remarks managed to somewhat stabilize sentiment, and the S&P almost regained all losses… before all hell broke loose and in a vicious tirade, Trump first slammed Powell, effectively calling him an enemy of the state”, and then warned he would retaliate to China soon, while ordering US companies (can a US president dictate to companies what they can and can not do?) to find an “alternative” to China.
The result was a violent slam lower in risk assets, with the S&P tumbling over 70 points, the Dow plunging over 500 point, its 3rd such drop in the month of August, which has emerged as the worst month for stocks since December 2018…”