I’m tired.
I just sat down in my office after what should’ve been 5 hours of travel turned into roughly 18.
I had planned to travel across the country from St. Louis to Jacksonville and have a really productive last two days of the week.
Unbeknownst to me, a massive line of super-powered thunderstorms had booked a flight at the same time.
My flight from St. Louis to Charlotte was delayed several hours, and then, when I did get on it, the pilot had to alter the flight path to go south almost all the way to Dallas in order to then fly east to Charlotte, to avoid the storms.
That stretched a 1.5 hour flight to a three-hour flight.
By the time I actually landed in Charlotte, my connecting flight had departed over two hours before, and I was stuck for the night.
The lovely folks at American Airlines provided me with a room for the night, and a connecting flight first thing in the morning, and I got maybe two hours of sleep before I was back on a plane and heading to Jacksonville.
I picked up my car at JAX airport, drove the roughly 30 minutes home, took a quick shower, then drove the 15 minutes to the office.
And now, here I am.
All of that to say that even after going through all that, I still didn’t have as bad an evening as the stock market.
You could watch in real time (or at least, you could have, if you weren’t marooned at Lambert International Airport) as the tariffs rallied, and then quickly collapsed during President Trump’s chaotic “Liberation Day” press conference.
The final result was a sweeping blanket of new reciprocal tariffs punishing everyone from China to Chile to Côte d’Ivoire with tariffs generally assessed at 50% of what the U.S. believes those companies are tariffing us.
Now, I’m not here to weigh in on the pros and cons of tariff policy.
But I think there are basically two schools of thought right now, and I am quickly moving from one to the other.
The first school of thought, the one I used to occupy, is that Trump wouldn’t have the stomach to enforce tariffs if the stock market really sold off.
Many would argue that Trump’s #1 barometer is the economy, and that a stock market selloff would quickly rectify any overreach in his tariff policy.
That position is becoming increasingly hard to justify as Trump continues to bang the tariff drum, despite the S&P being down roughly 11% from all-time highs over the last month-plus.
The other position, which I am moving towards, is that Trump — or at least, the advisors Trump currently trusts — have a purpose-driven mission to reshape the American economy in a way that will cause significant short-term pain.
That plan would include lowering the value of the dollar and re-shaping global trade agreements, with the end result (in theory) being a stronger, more durable economy for the long-term.
I don’t think Trump probably believes strongly in this. But he certainly might be willing to believe and follow the lead of top advisors like Peter Navarro and Vice President J.D. Vance who certainly do.
If those advisors are winning the day and spinning Trump an image of the future where he is remembered as the President who saved the American economy, then maybe he will ignore the sea of red on Wall Street long enough to see these policies through to their end goal.
Of course, anyone who has followed President Trump’s career knows that his advisors often lose favor quickly and quixotically.
So maybe it’s not the stock market that changes Trump’s mind but a fallout with Navarro or some of his like-minded friends in the administration.
Right now, it’s very difficult to tell.
But while all this volatility is high, one thing you can certainly do is sell premium to try and take advantage.
Premiums will be inflated, meaning your income reward should be higher if the trades work out for you.
If you’re not interested in that, spreads are another great idea. I personally will be avoiding straight calls/puts until volatility dies down a little.
Hope you have had a better day so far than the stock market or I have!
To your prosperity,
Stephen Ground
Editor-in-Chief, ProsperityPub
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