charlesn

DAalseth said:

Louis Rukeyser liked to call it a Dead Cat Bounce. 

Yep... the "green" start to the day in stocks made no logical sense. We're still looking down the barrel of a gun that's next set to go off at midnight tonight to be followed soon after by whatever China does next to retaliate. Xi is in a much better position to tough this out, by virtue of a dictatorship, complete control of media and no dissent. Xi is also helped by Trump's idiotic blunder to make this America vs. the World instead of America vs. China. We have wrested the title of Global Supervillain from Russia, no small feat in less than 3 months of Trump and no other nations will stand with us. 

This new price target is almost as stupid as the Orange Lunatic's tariffs. Apple's all-time high stock price was just under $260, and it has been slowly drifting down from that level ever since it hit it in late December, long before the tariff crisis. So slapping a new price target on APPL now that's within spitting distance of its all-time high makes no sense. The most honest price target right now would be, "We don't know," since it hinges entirely on what happens with tariffs, which ended up being more severe than even worst case scenarios predicted. So who can possibly predict what the White House imbecile will do next? Just look at today's headlines: as bad as the China tariffs already are for Apple, Cheeto Jeezuz is threatening another 50% on top of that! 

Marvin said:

This is what the government spending cuts and tariffs are about. If there's a better way to fix the debt issue other than cutting spending and trying to make up trade deficits, they'd probably like to hear some ideas. These moves suggest they don't have any better ones.

In mid-October last year, the widely respected financial journal, The Economist, ran with this headline and cover story: "The American Economy: The Envy of the World." And the sub-head was: "The American economy has left other rich countries in the dust." Not bad for the country that Trump has would have the brain-dead believe is in an "economic emergency" and the trading partner punching bag of the world. If so many countries are taking advantage of us, it would seem they're doing a pretty bad job of it! 

The last time we tried tariffs this insane (Trump's are actually worse than Smoot-Hawley), they helped usher in the Great Depression. So there's your "proof of concept" and the reason high tariffs have been discredited by economists left, right and center ever since. It also goes without saying that triggering a recession and stagflation with this stupidity will cut growth and revenue, thereby driving up deficits even higher. And spare me the BS that Trump, the self-styled King of Debt, has ANY interest in solving the debt problem. In his first term, his unpaid for tax breaks to the richest blew up the national debt by more than all 44 previous presidents COMBINED. 

As for spending cuts: the Pentagon budget is nearly $850 billion dollars and for decades has been spending more each year than the next 8-10 largest militaries in the world COMBINED. So how is it that we're always falling behind our adversaries? Why are so many weapons systems wildly overbudget, hugely behind schedule and never work as advertised? Seems like a place that's rife with waste, fraud and abuse. Musk, himself, has excoriated "idiots who are still building the F-35" and has pleaded, "...in the name of all this is holy, let us stop the worst military value for the money in history, which is the F-35 program." Did DOGE stop it? Nope. Where are the mass DOGE firings at the Pentagon? Why hasn't DOGE taking over the Pentagon computers? Why hasn't DOGE limited Pentagon credit cards to $1? Instead, DOGE is devastating health care and services for the veterans who risked their bodies and lives in defense of this country. Nice! DOGE isn't looking for waste, fraud and abuse--it is indiscriminately taking a chainsaw to the government to free up more money for tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires. 

nubus said:

 it will be less socially acceptable in China to buy U.S. products. 

You raise a good point that has not been fully appreciated yet. Focus so far has been on how the tariffs will impact Apple's #1 market, the USA. But Apple's #2 market is China, where it will likely face economic retaliation of some kind by the Chinese government (despite a lot of Apple production being still based in China) in addition to what I'm sure will be anti-American sentiment on the part of Chinese consumers. Trump has quickly transformed the USA into a global supervillain (mirroring himself in that regard), and I'm both expecting and understanding of what will likely be a tsunami of anti-American sentiment everywhere. We are the bad guys now. 

So I guess we now know what a million dollar cash gift to Trump buys you: nothing.