I'm doubtful that knowing how much politics matters, but only in a vague way, would have been enough to help them. Could someone who was obsessed with following the Trump administration's every move have predicted the tariffs in advance? I don't think financial markets priced them in?
This isn't about timing the market by being clairvoyant about the timing of a madman's tariffs.
This is about taking reasonable risk calculations as a small business with extremely high tariff exposure, when a president who did a bunch of high tariffs last time wins and election and says he'll do it again.
Sure multi-trillion-dollar financial institutions didn't run for the hills because they get paid when it goes up and paid when it goes down.
Yeah, I find it curiously delusional, but the reality seems to be a segment of the population just refuses to accept the drastic change in pace to political change.
No, knowing that Trump really likes tariffs is not enough to know specifically how he's going to do it. (And which laws he's going to break to get there.)
They were very much priced in, you had retailers purchasing a lot of imports in Q1 to prepare for them. What wasn’t priced in was the scale, which is what resulted in the initial sell off in April until the administration walked back the steepest rates
