The Dividend Cafe - Trade Teetering by a Tweet

Episode Date: May 10, 2019

Topics discussed: Current state of trade negotians with China Market Reactions to renewed threats of trade war. Links mentioned in this episode: DividendCafe.com TheBahnsenGroup.com

Welcome to the Dividend Cafe, financial food for thought. Well, hello. Welcome to this week's Dividend Cafe video. I'm actually standing outside at the SALT Symposium here in Las Vegas. SALT is this huge hedge fund conference I've attended for 10 years and it's early in the morning Thursday. Markets have already opened and the symposium doesn't start for a little bit and I'm having some computer issues where I normally be recording so I just decided to whip out the phone and do it here. So if you're listening on the podcast right now or watching the video we're kind of combining the medium because of the logistics of the week. I do plan to do an Advice and Insights podcast over the weekend or maybe

Monday, kind of recapping the entire week that has been because there's been an unbelievable, it's only been a few days, but just an awful lot of takeaways from this week, politically, economically, from an investment standpoint. Really a lot going on, and I'm getting ready to speak on a panel myself here in just a few minutes. But as far as this week, obviously, there's only one story. It's all about trade, all about Trump, all about tariffs, all about China. When I say all four of those things, I mean it as kind of one story, of course. But unfortunately, I'm sitting here recording without having any idea where this stuff is exactly going. The Chinese leadership conglomerate is coming in today for meetings that will not start

till after the market closes. And who knows where things will end up going by even into Friday's market action. We're down 300 points right now here today, Thursday. We were down about 500 on the week coming in. This is much less than I would have expected. I would have thought we would be down over 1,000 points on the week, and that potential is still there. But I think that the market has a very difficult time knowing what to

make of all this, how serious to take it. So we'll see where things go. But President Trump has said that they're going to put 25% tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese imports, and that all that could even go higher. China, of course, is threatening retaliation. There's not a lot that can be done by China from a tariff standpoint, but there's a lot they can do with patent denials and regulatory and things like that. So if this stuff does escalate, then I would not expect this volatility to clean up anytime soon. My best guess, and we don't know this, is that they do not end up having a resolution in the next 24 to 48 hours, but that they do end up having

one a couple of weeks, months later, so that neither the best case nor the worst case scenarios end up being the outcome here. The outcome will probably be some elevated volatility for the foreseeable future. And you know how I feel about volatility and the ability of an investor to properly relate to it. So we're going to do the things that we do, but I would like to give you more concrete information as it becomes available. I'm in heavy communication with as many people as I can be that I think give me the intelligence

and the information and perspective necessary to make good decisions around this. But you cannot act on the best case scenario here. And you certainly can't act on the worst case. The market clearly is agreeing in the sense that they believe, OK, we don't like this. There's some ground question marks. But we've seen this before. And President Trump's reputation for policy negotiation via this kind of bluster and threat and so forth, negotiation via this kind of bluster and threat and so forth. It's tactically common in the last couple of years. So we'll see. So allow me to come back to you with more information as we have it. And in the meantime, please do read DividendCafe.com. There's a lot more elaboration there this week. Thank you for listening to our Dividend Cafe podcast. And thank you for watching the video.

Greetings from Las Vegas. And we'll be sharing a whole lot more with you very soon. Take care. Thank you for listening to the Dividend Cafe, Thank you for listening to the Dividend Cafe. Financial food for thought. offer to buy or sell securities. No investment process is free of risk and there is no guarantee that the investment process or the investment opportunities referenced herein will be profitable. Past performance is not indicative of current or future performance is not a guarantee. The investment opportunities referenced herein may not be suitable for all investors. All data and information referenced herein are from sources believed to be reliable. Any opinion, news, research, analyses, prices, or other information containing this research is provided as general market commentary. It does not constitute investment advice. The team in

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