It’s a holiday week in the US and there isn’t a lot on the compressed data docket. But don’t worry: Donald Trump will keep things lively.

Not that investors should trouble themselves with “trivial” matters like transatlantic security relations, but Trump’s decision to threaten tariffs on Europe unless and until Denmark names a price for Greenland is a meaningful escalation with the potential not just to derail a fragile trade truce with Brussels, but in fact to upend NATO anew.

On that latter point, it’s fair to suggest the Greenland tariffs count as the most aggressively hostile stance Trump’s adopted towards NATO since he and JD Vance ambushed Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office early last year, a spectacle that was widely viewed as a disavowal of America’s Article 5 commitments despite Ukraine not belonging to the alliance.

Whether that’s in some way relevant for asset prices is anybody’s guess. Probably not. After all, seemingly nothing’s been relevant for asset prices since Lehman with the exception of an actual plague. The last 12 months have been one long rollercoaster ride at a horror-themed amusement park and stocks are at or near records pretty much everywhere you look, while corporate credit spreads are near record tights.

At — checks notes — 75bps, high-grade USD spreads have only been this tight on a handful of occasions dating back to the pre-Lehman era, as illustrated above.

That’s the backdrop against which Stephen Miran insists the Fed should cut rates aggressively.

To be fair, Main Street rates are elevated: A small business line of credit will cost you 7% at least, more than that for a used car loan, HELOCs are north of 8%, credit card rates are 21% and the 30-year fixed is 6.20% and that’s after falling ~90bps from the highs.

But market-based measures of financial conditions in the US are all in easy/loose territory. If Trump has his way, we’re staring down the barrel of another 100bps of Fed cuts (at least) in 2026, and he’s got his foot on the fiscal pedal tool.

Small wonder risk assets are inclined to shrug at recurring bouts of drama, up to and including Delta Force operations to abduct foreign heads of state, the specter of criminal proceedings against a sitting Fed Chair and a US land grab that could serve as the plot of a 1980s Hollywood comedy.

There’s BofA’s pseudo-famous “Bull & Bear Indicator.” It’s at 9.3 now, among the highest readings ever and a screaming contrarian “sell” signal.

If you’re curious, the gauge was last this high in February of 2018, when Jerome Powell took the reins at the Fed only to be greeted (on his very first day in the big seat) by the most acute disruption ever witnessed across the VIX complex.

“89% of ACWI indices are trading above their 50- and 200-DMAs,” BofA’s Michael Hartnett remarked, flagging what he described as “uber-bullish positioning” as well as “robust credit market technicals.”

That said — and to reiterate — geopolitics isn’t a good reason to sell. Valuations aren’t a good market timing device either, although when stretched, they can serve as a rationale to take out a little protection, particularly given that hedge budgets are re-upped for the new year.

So, if you’re going to fret about markets — and you don’t care anything about the multiplying existential risks from the wildest geopolitical environment in at least four decades — your time’s probably better spent worrying about things like hyper-scaler capex than Trump’s ice fishing expedition.

I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: There has to be a direct, straight-line connection between a given geopolitical event and corporate profits to elicit anything other than a short-lived swoon. I don’t know what that connection is in the context of Trump’s Greenland gambit.

Coming full circle, the data calendar this week in the US is confined to pending home sales, the final read on Q3 GDP, a hopelessly belated PCE prices update covering October and November and the final read on Michigan sentiment for January.