A rout in the stock market today might end up being the best thing

It’s a tough one in the equity markets today with the S&P 500 now down 2% and the Nasdaq down 2.7%.

Tariff angst is high ahead of Wednesday’s planned Trump tariffs. It’s very tough to estimate exactly what’s priced in for tariffs but if there is any room for de-escalation, the stock market today is making a good case.

For all the Trump bluster, he was beholden to the stock market in his first term. Plenty of people now argue that he has a different agenda with different people advising him and a higher pain threshold. That last point is the salient one as the S&P 500 sits 9.3% from the February high.

I suspect it will be down double that if the market concludes that he will stick to tariffs and his team continues to indicate they don’t care about the near-term economy.

So really it’s just a question of where that pain point is. I think a big portion of that depends on Congress as the entire House comes up for re-election in 20 months. That’s not much time to engineer some kind of pain trade.

Ultimately, I think a tiger doesn’t change his stripes and Trump still cares deeply about stock markets. He will be getting pressure from CEOs and Congressmen this weekend and I suspect that pressure will be a bit higher in light of today’s market action.

This article was written by Adam Button at www.forexlive.com.