Are We Back?
Good morning…
I went to bed at 7:30 last night so I guess the markets wore me out the last week.
Over the last week I have been calling as many founders as I can to see if I can offer any insights, help or network connections. The mood is pretty good. One thing I always tell founders is to ignore global macro and now global macro is being forced onto them…a huge distraction for early startups that should be focused on their next 10, 50, 100 customers and product/market fit.
Onward…
I have read way too much the last week because of the $VIX spike and now the unwinding. Moves like this seep into my day job once a year.
I think I have covered it very well from the start.
On March 31, before Liberation Day, I called it ‘The Kerplunk Market’ and felt market was getting too dangerous. You can go to the homepage and read the next six pieces in order if you like.
Yesterday came the Trump ‘flinch’ or ‘art of the deal’ depending on who you ask. For a sense of how nasty it is out there see the comments to Bill Ackman’s tweet yesterday. The market ripped and the $VIX plunged. These are better days to ‘panic’ which for me in this case means to sell. I sold almost everything I bought the last week but sold some $AAPL ( ▼ 2.79% ) for the first time in a while.
The Stocktwits Daily (free) email ‘The Rip’ does a great job covering the insanity of the $VIX unwinding, the insane rally and the ridiculous tweets from Trump and The White House yesterday.
So, are we back?
Short answer no. Long answer, hell no. But that is just my quick personal opinion.
In my head is all that cash that Warren Buffett is holding. I imagine he has put some money to work the last week, but I will wait to hear more. Supposedly Trump saw Jamie Dimon on Fox yesterday and that is what drove him to pause the Tariffs. Oy. If I was Trump, I might have visited Warren Buffett or invited him to the White House to chat. I don’t think that happened.
Howard Marks offered up some incredible insights on the new ‘regime change’ in this must watch Bloomberg interview. A great written recap of it is here.
These two points from Howard stand out to me on why I don’t think ‘we are back’…
Markets are constantly digesting news.
But what happened on April 2nd wasn’t just another policy move.
It marked a break from the post-WWII economic consensus.For 80 years, globalization was the dominant force shaping the global economy:
• Countries opened up
• Trade expanded
• Supply chains optimized for efficiency
• Goods became cheaper
• Inflation was subduedNow, the U.S. is signaling a new direction: protectionism.
This isn’t temporary turbulence—it’s a structural transition.
As Marks put it, it’s the biggest change in the investment environment he’s seen in his career.
and…
Marks doesn’t dismiss the U.S. He still believes it’s probably the best place to invest.
But he adds an important nuance: it’s less best than it used to be.
What once made the U.S. so attractive—predictable legal systems, fiscal responsibility, and investor trust—is now under pressure.
The U.S. has, in his words, acted like someone with a golden credit card: unlimited spending, no bill.
But there may come a time when the bill does arrive.This isn’t a call to abandon U.S. assets—but a nudge to be selective, not complacent.
I would love to see a ‘have you no shame’ moment in politics and leadership, a resetting of boundaries by both sides.
The Biden pardons, the out of control executive orders, the Trump pardons, the Pelosi stock trades, the Trump market tweets, the Elon bullying..on an on it feels like we are drifting farther away from rule of law and norms and so I trust the market and systems less.
In the meantime, back to work.
