While I don't want to downplay the importance of the rest of the video—you should listen to the whole thing—I did want to single out this one quote from the Financial Times.

Just to be clear, what is being labeled Trump derangement syndrome is analysts reacting normally to bad news. The argument here is that the people who say we should price in that news are the ones who are deranged.
I have long had the suspicion that the Trump cult of personality was influencing investors, particularly retail investors. There has long been an overlap between the Silicon Valley alt-right and the diamond hands/"we are the Spartans" traders on Robinhood.
It is reassuring, if not comforting, to have these impressions backed up by reporting from a source as credible as the FT.
This is also another reminder that with a Keynesian beauty contest, irrational behavior can become rational, at least for a time, if enough people do it. In this case, buy-the-dip crowds have created a self-fulfilling prophecy that the market will always bounce back almost immediately from the worst news. Investors who try to base their positions on reality are punished; those who don't are rewarded. Paired with the faith that there will always be a TACO, this has created a profoundly dysfunctional market, which is particularly bad given that stock prices are one of the few things that have previously kept Trump in line.
Admittedly, I'm no expert, but I don't believe that the laws of financial gravity have been repealed. At some point, reality will win. I also believe in that bit of folk wisdom that says the higher you climb, the further you fall.

No comments:
Post a Comment