Earlier this month, Marko Kolanovic said the Trump administration’s hopelessly mercurial approach to trade policy risked making US stocks “uninvestable.”

Far from dispensing with such concerns, Monday’s fireworks on Wall Street — where equities rallied sharply on what bemused analysts described as a stunning China tariff reversal from Trump — only underscored the point.

The outcome distribution (as it applies both to markets and the macro) widened dramatically post-“Liberation Day,” such that US stocks are now subject to the kinds of swings typically reserved for EM shares or witnessed around crises.

Big US tech rallied a delirious ~4% on Monday, an absurd move which pushed the Nasdaq 100 into a bull market — just six weeks on from a bear market plunge.

Do note: An “investable” market isn’t the same thing as a “tradable” market. Markets like this one — markets in thrall to the bipolar ups and downs associated with fatal doses of “covfefe” — are eminently tradable. But they aren’t investable because it’s impossible to gauge fair value when the tariff rate on trade between the world’s two largest economies is 145% one day and 30% the next.

That delta is (easily) large enough to make or break entire companies. A business that was entirely viable with tariffs at, say, 20%, might be entirely uneconomical with tariffs double that, let alone quintuple. Today, your company’s thriving. Tomorrow, it’s out of business. The next day, back to thriving. The day after that, not viable. All depending on what sort of mood Donald Trump’s in.

As noted here on Monday morning, there’s no point in attempting to “analyze” this. Trump’s clearly making it up as he goes along. Way back three days ago, 80% was probably “about right” for China tariffs in a de-escalation scenario, according to Trump. No one could discern where that number came from when he floated it last week, but considering tariffs were cut to 30% just 48 hours later, it’s a safe bet he pulled it out of his ass.

Who knows where tariffs will be a month from now. If you think Trump feels bound by the 90-day pause, you don’t know Trump. There’s no guarantee whatever that he won’t pop up on a random Sunday evening and declare a resumption of trade hostilities. Just ask 2019.

On Monday, Trump said he’s probably going to chat with Xi Jinping later this week, and said he’s “not looking to hurt China.” That latter assertion’s absurd. Of course he was looking to “hurt China” — what else are you doing with a 145% tariff rate?

But on the off chance Trump was being sincere, there’s good news: He didn’t. Hurt China. As Bloomberg wrote, “Xi Jinping’s decision to stand his ground against Trump could hardly have gone any better for the Chinese leader” given that the Geneva accord “ended up meeting nearly all of Beijing’s core demands.”

Trump’s resolve lasted a whole two months, “just” shy of the several decades you’d probably need to best Beijing in any sort of staring contest or war of attrition.

Dario Perkins, an economist at TS Lombard, summed it up best. “Markets celebrate on the basis that this US administration is only incompetent, not totally insane,” he jeered, on Monday.

For his part, Kolanovic suggested it’s no longer clear that America made the right choice in November. When it comes to which is worse, “being ruled over by woke crazies or listen[ing] daily to how our Dear Leader is about to close another great trade ‘deal’, it’s a close call,” Marko said.