If there were a democrat in the white house the stock market would be tanking right now at the news of supply chain chokepoints in oil. But, under Trump the market has reacted much less. It's easy to make the mistake of thinking of the market as a force of nature but it's really just the aggregated decisions of a few thousand wealthy people and institutions.

The market is supposed to be objective and motivated only by profit but these decisions are informed by the biases of those people. Worse, it's deeply informed by what those few thousand wealthy people *think* their peers will do.

So you have people saying "no one believes Trump when he says the war is over, but we expect the market to react to what he says so we will react in anticipation of that... thus creating the reaction."

But, this doesn't go on forever.

At some point what the president says will become irrelevant to the market. His words are already irrelevant to many people, and to many nations because he simply lies far too often. It's like making investment decisions based on the output of a fortune cookie.

The previous observation that the market would be tanking with a democrat in office is based on similar circular logic. "we expect everyone else will pull out so we will move first"

I think there is something deeper at work as well. The thousands of wealthy people who make up the market see Trump as someone who protects their interests. If there is economic pain they expect that he will shield them. This is how many of the ordinary people who support him see it as well.

Both of them are being naive and duped. There is only one person Trump cares about. He might care a little more about rich people, but only because he's a member of that group.

@futurebird

Many of those large investors operate strategies that thrive on volatility and exploit access to insider knowledge (or, at least, things you and I don't know), and those strategies are often far more profitable than "buy-and-hold" Boglehead investing.

@vestige @futurebird it's like how anyone with any sense has see the impending collapse of the AI bubble that will take with it massive amounts of money (both real & imaginary), but the industry continues to get pumped, because the entire investor class are acting like slightly less-shortsighted crypto bros. the bubble will collapse, but they all expect to sell their stock before that happens and rake in tons of cash, so until then they're trying to inflate its value

@vestige because all of them somehow imagine themselves as the ones who won't be left holding worthless stock

honestly, this is the best possible explanation for any of them investing. the main reason they do is because they're all easily flattered fools who believe any hype that promises them money and the ability to fire all their workers

but it can stil be both these things