From Richard Breslow, former FX trader and fund manager who writes for Bloomberg
Everyone Left Presser Saying the Other Guy Lost
There are many ways to look at most issues. What we like to call nuance. In today’s world, sadly, there’s only thumbs-up or thumbs-down. It’s like living in the Roman Colosseum. Yesterday’s press conference was a disaster of arrogance and misdirection, or it was a tour de force where he taught the press a right, good lesson. What we got was what we should have had as the base-case expectation. He actually ran an honest campaign. And that’s what scares a lot of people.
The take-aways from this should be, he is who he claims and it’s unwise to project any other persona on him. And that what Americans are hearing, and in many cases hoping for, is not what people outside of the country can believe is happening
The other lesson not learned is that at a press conference, you can’t hope to get the questions you want to have answered unless you ask them. If investors were left disappointed on details relevant to the economy and policies, it’s because no one raised the issues in any substantive way
Interestingly, whether you agree with anything said or not, it might be useful to note for future day trading that S&P 500 futures sagged on Russia and conflicts of interest and bounced every time he went back to the campaign’s speech points
I wonder what they might have done had someone asked him the same South China Sea question posed to Secretary of State- designate Tillerson at his confirmation hearing. One thing I can tell you is which question and which answer was being discussed in the Chinese press today
I’ve read any number of stories this morning saying Trump trades unwind on disappointment with press conference. Meanwhile, it won’t be lost on the President-elect’s team that after the event, the Dow rallied almost 100 points, the 10-year auction was strong even with big primary issuance and the dollar was off a bit, which they won’t mind at all
There may be many people rating it “dislike”, but all he’s hearing is “great job, boss”. And that’s the rub.
via http://ift.tt/2ijLT5X Tyler Durden