sutebayashi wrote: ↑Wed Apr 09, 2025 9:38 pm
Good morning all. What a difference a good sleep makes eh?
Not over yet, but I guess we saw the 2025 market bottom.
That was from the morning Trumpy paused his reciprocal tariffs for 90 days, except for China.
As one barometer, the S&P 500 has retraced more than 50% of the losses seen after the all time highs circa 6,100 back in February, and the lows of early April below circa 4,800 haven't been revisited so far.
Still 8 months to go in the year but I think things are looking good, and brought forward more NISA growth purchases in April, to hopefully capitalize on lowish prices.
Yet to be seen what kind of trade deals are signed in the near future as a result of all the tariff drama, but if we as Japan residents gain more rice options, I for one will be happy for that too, and left with a slightly fatter wallet on the way home from the supermarket.
Still some open questions - what does the USD/JPY rate do from here (I'm a hopeless yen bear). For buying more foreign assets as is my stance, it's been good, but obviously we'd all seen some bigger yen values in our accounts when the rate was above 150.
And China's next moves.
This probably won't be the last time Trumpy upsets the stock market apple cart in his presidency so I think it is worth taking mental note that that is the sort of behaviour he'll demonstrate.
1) demand attention ("liberation day"), talk tough
2) use or create leverage (e.g. exaggerated to bogus grounds for reciprocal tariffs)
3) pivot ("flipflop") to other options when they look better, despite prior tough talk (after seeing the markets plunge)
I'd be more worried about buying a panic selloff if Xi pulls some power play. He doesn't care about western stock markets nor his own I suspect.
