Spekulatius

Same for me. It’s great for playing around the margins with existing positions.

Yes, I am also buying the dip and selling the rip which feels like it might be a good idea for the time being.

There are still 25% tariffs for autos, steel, Aluminum in addition to 10% blanket tariffs in addition to the absurd China tariffs which will cause a trade freeze with them. The trade weighted tariff rate for the US went from 3-4% to ~15%. Thats still a huge shock to the system.

I agree on China but the issue is that if the idea is indeed to balance the trade with each country individually as the formula shown suggest, then only large tariffs will do do for these countries. They don’t really much to offer either. So approaching the Trump administration to make a deal and to obtain a deal are very different things.

I believe the Chinese have already outsized economic influence in Vietnam. Vietnam has been used as an assembly hub but also to dodge tariffs for the Chinese. It very similar to US- Mexico relations (proximity, economic ties, low cost manufacturing hub) but there are also political differences (border disputes, South China Sea disputes). It seems to me that this tariff war brings them closer into the Chinese sphere of influence.

You are correct, not every country can have a trade surplus. The goods will flow elsewhere and China/Korea/Japan will have to consume more, shrinking their trade surplus. I think countries like Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia will be hardest hit, because they use trade to get out of poverty and may have lost the biggest trade partner. Getting the trade balanced with the USA is not an option for them because there is no demand for US goods if their populace makes so little. Making a deal with China out of necessity is not a good option for them either.

This basically means that exports from China to the USA will collapse. These tariffs are a trade embargo basically.

How about missing the worst 10 days and missing the best 10 days? I bet you come out ahead. They are also typically very close together too, so not quite as unrealistic as it seems.

The largest daily gains and the largest daily losses are often very close together.

Raising trade barriers to other countries with tariffs etc actually takes the US out of the international trade, not China. I am confused why somebody should think it’s the other way around. The USA is basically erecting a trade barrier around itself with tariffs. I expect China to approach the smaller countries in their neighborhood that are hard hit by US tariffs for trade deals. Laos, Vietnam (who is already close to China anyways). Bangladesch and a few others could be great targets to develop a larger trade hegemony sphere. Vietnam is for China what Mexico is for USA - a geographically close pool of labor and manufacturing hub that they have influence over.

Except for China, do we know which county has 10% and which has not? I am not clear about the EU. My guess is that even Trump does not know as he follows his instincts and makes stuff up as he goes. I do think a lot of damage is being done economically because it is impossible to plan ahead, which means little gets done and lot of things get out on hold.

Now we have a 90day pause on tariffs. You can’t make this up. I guess China called the bluff and now what?

The Ukraine war was supposed to be over before inauguration. Now it’s a tough problem.

So the next move is Greenland. Makes for a bigger US for sure.

Every Energy, retail, homebuilder, manufacturing and tech exec who liked Trump because of deregulation right now:

I see right now that bonds are screaming higher. Falling equities and sharply higher treasuries is not something that one sees too often. I don’t think it’s a good thing.

Like all commodity memory business SNDK is deeply cyclical and will lose lots of money in a real exonomic downturn.

I think there are some importers exporters middlemen this might be in trouble with those tariffs. If you take example China was 100% or whatever tariffs, something that was ordered 2 month ago and shows up tomorrow costs twice as much. Then can they even wholesale it any more? Their customer might cancel and then they are left holding the bag, depending on how the contract are structured. Even if there are contracts, it could result in lawsuits, while their cash is tied up. Or they pay the tariffs and de day later Trump changes his mind and then can thy get the money back? Nobody knows. If not, they make a huge loss’s in what is probably a razor margin business. My guess us all those Import / Export business , wholesalers or even the large retail cos are shitting in their pants and wonder what to do with this mess. It is likely that this causes major supply chain snarls similar to what happened with COVID-19 if this continues. Except now the Virus is in the WH.

How so? China stopped selling them to the West (not just the US). You can’t buy them any more and they had 80-90% market share. But the real interesting thing about the ban that they also stopped export of products from the materials. What that means is unclear to me, could mean the finished magnets or even electric motors made with these magnets. I think they left it vague on purpose. I personally know that some products that contain Germanium (which was export controlled in late December 2024) are export controlled as well , not just the metal itself which pretty much means you can buy it any more from Chinese vendors. Also, from hearsay, Vietnamese vendors won’t sell it either, because they are really disguised Chinese business operating in Vietnam.

Maybe MH was taken. MC was the ticker from Most Hennessy before the merger with Louis Vitton.

The issue isn’t as much getting it out the ground, the issue is concentrating and processing it. Rare earth deposits are low grade which means a lot of processing is needed to get it concentrated and since many are chemically similar it takes effort to purify them too. The Chinese had a long time to optimize these processing steps and it was state sponsored for a long time, hence their large market share. I think most ore are actually imported into China and not mined locally. Nobody can beat them so far in processing them. This is something the west will have to do no matter what.

Agreed. Trump has a ~23% chance of dying of natural causes due to his age within his term based on actuary tables (0.93x0.935x0.94x0.955~ 0.78). Thats a 22% chance of Vance becoming president.

Buy at the primary exchange in Europe - ticker symbol MC. You not just save on the trade, you also save on ADR fees annually. Note that France has a small transaction tax but you go to pay that one no matter what.

The export controls (effectively bans) have received very little attention in the news, but are a big deal: https://investingnews.com/china-rare-earths-export-controls/ https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/china-bans-sale-of-three-critical-elements-and-superhard-materials-to-the-us/4020652.article As of now, the export controls include rare earth (used in magnets and many other things), Germanium , Gallium, antinomy (used in semiconductor manufacturing l Infrared applications). China has in the past hinted at export controls but now they actually shot a pretty big bazooka, especially the rare earth part. I think we are going to see shortages within the next few month who the safety stock runs out in many companies. Many electric motors and tools used in semiconductor manufacturing use rare earth in magnets amongst other things.

Good summary of the situation and unfortunately I agree with everything. The current setup does not look great to me. I don’t think people realize, how much the current uncertainty hurts the business. If you are a supply chain manager and need to order something from abroad (typically done 2-3 month before delivery) you have no idea how much it’s going to cost. If you want to export something , you have no idea what sort of tariffs your customer may see and possibly cancel the order and return it to you. If you are participant in a complex supply chain food like aerospace , you will likely see all sorts of grenades going off snd the fist example was Howmet declaring force majeure and I suspect many more will do as well. That means they can cancel exiting contracts. Then have this rare earth issue that’s going to blow up in few month from when the existing safety stocks are depleted. There is lot of risk that is going to hit the news pretty soon, if everything stay like it is.