Objectively Crazy.

So clearly, anyone who is still clinging to the idea that it was a “tremendous” idea to let failed businessman, failed mail order steak salesman, for-profit college con artist, failed professional football team owner, successful reality TV host, and WWE hall of fame inductee Donald Trump try his hand at being President is either lying to you or else is just completely disconnected from reality.

On Thursday, the President kicked things off at 6:19 a.m. by telling 50 million Twitter followers that he would doubtlessly prevail in hand-to-hand combat with Joe Biden. That right there should have been a hint as to how the rest of the day was going to go.

By lunchtime, Trump had lost the lead lawyer on the Mueller investigation as John Dowd reportedly resigned in disgust at the President’s unwillingness to listen to reason when it comes to the relative wisdom of sitting across the table from Robert Mueller and answering questions about collusion, obstruction of justice, and (probably) all manner of financial crimes.

 

Then came the tariff announcement, which was hilariously pitched as some semblance of conciliatory thanks to what amounts to a technicality and also because Trump decided to wait a couple of weeks to see what his “friend” Xi has to say. Here are some things Xi could “say” (read: “do”).

All of that is objectively crazy.

 

Just ask China:

U.S. TRADE ACTION IGNORED RATIONAL VOICES: CHINESE EMBASSY

yeah, no shit

— Heisenberg Report (@heisenbergrpt) March 22, 2018

By the time it was all said and done, stocks had crashed. Dow futures -1,000 since the post-Fed knee-jerk:

The S&P has fallen 7 out of the last 9 sessions and is sitting at a three-week low. This was the worst day for U.S. equities since the February 8 carnage:

VIX.. 23 handle:

Not helping matters on Thursday was Facebook, which fell again as investors were clearly not impressed with Mark Zuckerberg’s attempt to pretend like he’s a human being during a Wednesday evening CNN interview. He did say he’d be willing to testify on Capitol Hill assuming he was “the right person” for the job and it’s a good thing he’s willing, because this:

• HOUSE COMMERCE CMTE CALLS ON ZUCKERBERG TO TESTIFY BEFORE CMTE

Shares erased any “hope” from Wednesday and are back to being down ~11% on the week:

Bull flattening! 10Y yields lower by ~6bp, 2s10s flatter by ~3.5bp.

So banks are fucked:

Dollar was marginally higher on the day, but here’s the picture since the Fed:

The pound briefly spiked following the BoE (7-2), but gave it all back:

European stocks were markedly lower on the day following a string of poor PMIs. Banks were hit especially hard with the SX7P falling as much as 2.6%, to its lowest in damn near a year:

The DAX and the Stoxx 600 are approaching YTD lows:

Overnight, the Hang Seng was down pretty handily as Tencent got hit and H-shares erased a 1.6% gain to close lower:

Mainland shares suffered as well following the obligatory post-Fed PBoC OMO hike:

The Guggenheim China Technology ETF had its worst day since 2015:

Notably, the offshore yuan dove, posting its biggest daily loss since late last month as the tariff announcement trumped (figuratively and literally) the OMO hike:

Summing up:

Looks like we're entering the "Oh shit, he really IS a childlike maniac" cycle pic.twitter.com/9K1I9OM4pU

— Thornton McEnery (@ThorntonMcEnery) March 22, 2018