WORST DAY FOR STOCKS SINCE ELECTION AS MARKETS WEIGH PRESIDENT’S FUTURE.
Investors were shelving rosy hopes for U.S. tax reform and rethinking strategies premised on Donald Trump’s economic growth promises on Wednesday, as the President faced his loudest criticism yet over possible collusion between his election campaign and Russia.
From stocks to bonds to the U. S. dollar, a bevy of trades that have been fashionable since Trump’s election last November, were getting dialed back or in some cases shredded as his reform agenda looked increasingly vulnerable amid the fallout from his firing last week of James Comey, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The uncertainty about Trump’s future increased in the last 24 hours over allegations Trump had sought to end Comey’s investigation into ties between the president’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, and Russia, and even some Republicans were now calling for a deeper probe into possible obstruction of justice.
The result was the harshest sell off yet in U. S. stocks since Trump was elected and a jettisoning of positions that were tied to the notion that his policies would stoke economic growth and inflation.
“The Trump Trade is over as of today,” Ross Gerber, cofounder and CEO of Gerber Kawasaki Wealth and Investment Management, who said they have been selling for the past 45 days and continued to be bearish on risky assets. “We’ve seen cracks all year, but today, this is the first institutional selling we are seeing.”
Indeed, some “Trump trades” have been unwinding for weeks, especially in the bond and currency markets where bets on inflation risks and economic growth prospects are most prevalent.
“This has created opportunities for investors,” said Richard Benson, managing director, co-head of portfolio investments, Millennium Global Investments, London, who said they had been short U.S. dollars against European currencies. “And right now, we’re looking at these opportunities.”
On Wednesday, one key indicator of the level of inflation five years from now fell to its lowest since late November. Meanwhile, the U.S. dollar, which had surged more than five per cent after Trump’s election, was effectively back to its Election Day level.
The real pain trade on Wednesday, though, was in stocks. Through the end of last week the S&P 500 stock index had gained more than 12 per cent since Trump won the White House, and while the index has seen one other day since last November’s election in which it fell by more than 1.0 per cent, Wednesday’s drop of 1.8 per cent was its largest one-day fall in eight months.
Investors have become increasingly bearish on US equities versus international assets in recent weeks, pulling a total of US$11.2 billion from U. S.- based domestic stock funds, according to Thomson Reuters Lipper data, and instead stampeding into U. S.- based stock funds that invest in Europe.