Wednesday got off to a decidedly inauspicious start in the U.S. when Donald Trump warned Russia that he was just itching to ram some “nice, new, smart” missiles up the ass of a certain “gas killing animal” in Damascus.
“Stable genius”:
Russia vows to shoot down any and all missiles fired at Syria. Get ready Russia, because they will be coming, nice and new and “smart!” You shouldn’t be partners with a Gas Killing Animal who kills his people and enjoys it!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 11, 2018
Exclusive footage from the White House at ~7 a.m.:
He tried to walk that back about a half hour later, but needless to say, the diplomatic damage was done. “The whole world is horrified by Trump’s tweeting,” the Speaker of Russia’s parliament said. I mean, the “whole world is horrified” by Assad’s penchant for gassing children to death too, but yes, everyone agrees that the tweets are egregious.
Trump basically deep-sixed equities for the day or at least created enough uncertainty to ensure that nothing could rally.
more of those "imagine going back in time 5 years and being told this would be a real headline one day" moments… pic.twitter.com/lSgey0wZsI
— Heisenberg Report (@heisenbergrpt) April 11, 2018
Stocks were lower across the board – the Nasdaq held up ok, all things considered.
You can see when it started to go awry:
For its part, the ruble fell on Trump’s missile threat, extending a harrowing slide, but rebounded later after Mnuchin appeared to rule out the “nuclear option” on Russian debt:
Speaking of beleaguered currencies, the lira tried to rally on Wednesday as Yildirim attempted to calm a panicked market, insisting that the central bank will do “what’s needed, when needed” (more on the ruble and the lira here). Consider “when” now.
Crude soared (again). Between Trump’s missile threat and the Houthis lobbing more missiles at the Saudis, the inventory data took a backseat.
“Big league” gains for U.S. energy shares over the past two sessions:
We got the Fed minutes and they were some semblance of hawkish. There was general agreement about the near-term stimulative effects of expansionary fiscal policy and there was also mention of tweaking the statement language to reflect a bias towards neutral (as opposed to overtly accommodative) policy. Here, via Bloomberg’s Matthew Boesler, is perhaps the most notable takeaway:
The most meaningful takeaway from these minutes, from @boes_, is a definitive clip-and-save. pic.twitter.com/NEMylqDhaM
— Luke Kawa (@LJKawa) April 11, 2018
The dollar popped on the headlines:
Treasurys bull flattened – there was a lackluster 10Y auction in there:
There was more of this:
And I’ve got to tell you, all jokes aside he’s done better than a lot of people figured he would. The Street likes it:
European shares were lower across the board. Trump didn’t help:
Finally, for your moment of zen, a short GIF requiem for Paul Ryan courtesy of the incomparable Parker Molloy:
https://twitter.com/ParkerMolloy/status/984055507609706496
https://twitter.com/ParkerMolloy/status/984055620671344640
