“La sabiduría de la vida consiste en la eliminación de lo no esencial. En reducir los problemas de la filosofía a unos pocos solamente: el goce del hogar, de la vida, de la naturaleza, de la cultura”.
Lin Yutang
Cervantes
Hoy es el día más hermoso de nuestra vida, querido Sancho; los obstáculos más grandes, nuestras propias indecisiones; nuestro enemigo más fuerte, el miedo al poderoso y a nosotros mismos; la cosa más fácil, equivocarnos; la más destructiva, la mentira y el egoísmo; la peor derrota, el desaliento; los defectos más peligrosos, la soberbia y el rencor; las sensaciones más gratas, la buena conciencia, el esfuerzo para ser mejores sin ser perfectos, y sobretodo, la disposición para hacer el bien y combatir la injusticia dondequiera que esté.
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES Don Quijote de la Mancha.
La Colmena no se hace responsable ni se solidariza con las opiniones o conceptos emitidos por los autores de los artículos.
17 de mayo de 2017
Wall Street Wonders What’s Next After Trump Jolts Markets
by
Dani Burger
,
Brian Chappatta
, and
Nabila Ahmed
Dow average sinks 370 points in worst day since September
Gold rallies, volatility spikes as politics spills to markets
For the first time, a Wall Street that’s been giddy over Donald Trump is starting to ask some hard questions.
From
Day 1, markets have rallied, defying what many of the same Wall Street
types said would be a disastrous election outcome. Since then, U.S.
stocks have hit record after record, driving up shares of Goldman Sachs
to JPMorgan Chase to Apple, as investors quickly focused on what his
pro-business, tax-cutting agenda would mean for corporate profits.
But the steady drumbeat of bad news may finally be taking its toll. On Wednesday, stocks tumbled,
Treasuries soared and volatility came roaring back as a series of
damaging revelations -- from Trump’s disclosure of classified
information to Russian officials to reports that he pressed FBI Director
James Comey to drop a probe into former National Security Adviser
Michael Flynn -- prompted many on Wall Street to wonder whether the
turbulence that has shattered the market’s calm might be the start of
something bigger. It’s also left many to ask whether the market was
blinded by its own optimism over Trump’s business-friendly agenda.
“Crazy times, huh?” said Matt Maley, an equity strategist at
Miller Tabak & Co. “I’ve talked to a few personal friends and a few
customers who I know are supportive of Trump that are saying, boy, this
isn’t good.”
Of course, financial markets are often punctuated by
bouts of alarm that have unsettled traders during normal times. And up
to now, it’s been easy to dismiss the president’s missteps as the price
of electing an outsider. But now, the biggest question is whether
Trump’s presidency is in trouble.
For some of the world’s largest
banks, Trump’s firing of Comey last week was a signal moment. At least
two global firms have started mapping out how financial markets might
react to an impeachment -- a scenario they still saw as improbable,
according to people with knowledge of the matter, who declined to speak
publicly because such deliberations are politically sensitive. While
their work is just beginning and it’s too early to draw conclusions, the
people said, it’s a telling sign of just how serious things have
become.
“The political risk has been upped here -- things sound
more ominous and serious than a week ago,” said Gary Pollack, the head
of fixed-income trading at Deutsche Bank AG’s Private Wealth Management
unit.
Much
of the problem is how pervasively investors had tuned out Trump in the
months before the latest scandal broke. The CBOE Volatility Index’s
average level since December has been 25 percent below that of 2016 --
not exactly a turbulent year to begin with. Everything from Treasuries
to currencies and stocks had been limping along without a care -- before
Wednesday.
“Markets are very blasé about political risk until the very
last moment,” former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said at
the SkyBridge Alternatives Conference, known as SALT, in Las Vegas.
“They go along until something happens that pulls the rug out from under
their assumptions.”
The S&P 500 Index, which set another
all-time high just two days ago, was routed in the worst selloff in
eight months, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average’s 372-point slide
was its steepest since the election. The dollar fell a sixth day, while
yields on 10-year Treasuries tumbled by the most since the day after the
Brexit vote.
Trump is facing the deepest crisis
of his presidency after contents of a memo written by Comey surfaced
Tuesday, alleging that the president asked him to drop an investigation
of Flynn. That came after Trump disclosed highly classified intelligence
to Russian officials in a meeting last week.
“The market is
running with politics,” said Bret Barker, who oversees U.S. fixed-income
at TCW Group Inc., which manages $194 billion. “There’s just not much
out there to change fundamentals right now.”
A vacuum of catalysts faced anyone hoping the
traditional saviors of markets would step up to calm things down.
Earnings season is over, the next report on U.S. employment is 16 days
away, and the Fed doesn’t meet again for a month. That’s potentially bad
news for a stock market whose 10 percent rally since Election Day has
pushed valuations to the highest levels since just after the dot-com
bubble.
The biggest beneficiaries of the Trump trade were bearing
the brunt of the carnage on Wednesday. Exchange-traded funds tuned to
stocks with the most sensitivity to market swings were having their
worst day in two months. Bank shares in the S&P 500 plunged 3
percent, bringing the slide from a March 1 record to 8.6 percent.
“That’s
one of the problems with rather a quiet market that even a small ripple
could look pretty big,” said Brian Jacobsen, chief portfolio strategist
at Wells Fargo Funds Management. “Sometimes if it’s too quiet, people
think things can only get worse.”
