Stocks Fall, Gold Spikes As Trump Ends Manufacturing Council

It looks like the market might finally be realizing that politics matter.

Because just as this tweet hit…

Rather than putting pressure on the businesspeople of the Manufacturing Council & Strategy & Policy Forum, I am ending both. Thank you all!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 16, 2017

…we got an immediate risk-off move across assets.

S&P 500 DIPS TO LOWS, GOLD FUTURES SPIKE AFTER TRUMP COMMENTS

Here’s stocks, the dollar, and yields (in descending order):

And here’s gold and the VIX…

Just to be clear: this is what everyone was afraid of. Trump can’t get out of his own way.

And while initially that only impeded progress on his growth-friendly agenda, his erratic behavior is now deep-sixing the agenda altogether.

Recall what Bloomberg’s Ye Xie said on Tuesday evening:

Trump‘s press conference on infrastructure quickly swerved to him launching new controversial comments on that deadly confrontation between protesters in Virginia. It’s a typical pattern of his political woes stealing the limelight from the economic agenda.