So What Happens Next? Global Risk Sentiment Could Be ‘Fragile’


There’s no telling how things will play out over the next several trading sessions because over the holiday weekend, the President of the United States literally accused one of the most important companies in America of defrauding the Post Office, said one of the nation’s most important newspapers should be forced to register as a lobbyist, and threatened to end NAFTA because apparently, there are “caravans” of illegal immigrants invading from the south.

In case it isn’t clear enough, all of that is bizarre in the extreme and it comes at the worst possible time both in terms of tech stocks and in terms of delicate trade negotiations.

Trump has seemingly undercut the recovery tech stocks staged on Thursday to close the quarter by effectively confirming what his spokesperson(s) spent two days denying (i.e. that he is indeed pondering some kind of action against Amazon) and also cast further further doubt on NAFTA, thereby making the U.S. seem like even less of a reliable negotiating partner than the country seemed like last week following the announcement of the new tariffs on China.

That’s not to say investors won’t simply ignore his weekend rantings, it’s just to say that he most assuredly didn’t do anyone any favors with his Saturday and Sunday shenanigans.

Consider that and then consider the following bit from Barclays who most assuredly wrote this prior to Trump’s Sunday morning tweets:

Trade protectionism will remain in the spotlight. The US Trade Representative has until Friday to publish the list of Chinese products subject to tariffs, bringing headline risk back as markets start to assess the effects of the imposed tariffs and China’s likely response. As such, global risk sentiment might remain fragile this week.

In the Americas, despite recent optimism, NAFTA negotiations are far from conclusion and the last round, tentatively scheduled to start in the second week of April, will gather attention as parties decide how to move forward as the Mexican election looms.

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