Trading in the Age of Trump

Trading in the Age of Trump

Look, I don’t talk politics. Never have. Never will. But if you’re serious about trading in this market — and I mean actually serious, not just meme-chasing and options-slinging for dopamine hits — you’d better start wrapping your head around this one cold, hard fact: politics and economics are now joined at the hip like two drunks stumbling out of a casino. You can’t untangle ‘em. Not anymore. And the sooner we all stop pretending we still live in some Rockwell painting where the invisible hand of the free market lovingly guides capital to its highest use — the better.  

Because here’s the raw truth. We are a centrally controlled, wearing a red, white, and blue flag as a costume. Doesn’t matter if you love Trump, or not, or think politics is one big shadow play — this isn’t about feelings. It’s about function and math.  

And the function of our markets right now is being hijacked by executive orders, backroom Fed deals, and trillion-dollar bills being passed out like candy on Halloween. Meanwhile, smart money is bailing. It’s not just hiding in bonds and blue chips anymore. It’s fleeing to Gold. To Bitcoin. Running toward scarce, decentralized assets. Anything outside the reach of sticky government fingers. Because while capital runs toward freedom, power is consolidating.  

This Tweet from President Trump on Truth Social pretty much says it all. 

Source: Truth Social 

I don’t care what side of the aisle you fall on… Here we’ve got a government official trying to play CEO of Walmart, a $778 billion monster of a company built on razor-thin margins and volume so massive it makes Amazon sweat. These guys don’t survive by accident. They serve customers who watch every penny like it’s their last lifeline. 

And now, the Government thinks it can strong-arm one of the most efficient retailers on the planet into adjusting prices — not for economic reasons — but to make the President look good before the mid-terms.   

You. Can’t. Make. This. Up. 

This isn’t capitalism. This isn’t leadership. And trust me, I’m watching. Closely. 

Just imagine this for a second… 

A government official grabs a mic and bellows: “The Trump conglomerate of hotels made billions last year. To prove their love for the red, white, and blue —— they should immediately slash their prices back to pre-pandemic levels.” 

Can you imagine? Let that one sink in. 

That kind of thinking and posturing is pure poison. And I’d object to it just the same.  

Because that’s not capitalism. That’s not freedom. That’s some back-alley, banana-republic garbage. 

Freedom demands restraint from the top — not command and control economics dressed up in patriotism. If we want this country to keep standing, that’s a line we don’t cross. 

You can’t make this stuff up. It reminds me of President Reagan’s famous joke that the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” 

And just when you thought it couldn’t get more interesting…. 

The Game of Thrones trade war just took another wild turn — and this one’s got more twists than a rattlesnake in a blender. 

The latest episode? Washington slammed the brakes on those headline-grabbing 50% tariffs against the EU. Yep — put ‘em on ice until July 9th. No clarity, no resolution. Just another cliffhanger. 

Source: Truth Social 

So here we are — post-“Liberation Day,” Trump tossing matchsticks into the global trade barn — and we’ve got just enough smoke and numbers now to start asking the real questions. 

Are these tariffs flexing America’s muscle… or shooting us in the foot? 

Is this how you win a trade war — or how to jack up inflation and torch consumers? 

Bottom line: Are we stronger? Or are we just loud and broke? 

The budget says one thing. The grocery bill says another.  

And the markets? They don’t care about speeches — they price in consequences. 

Once upon a time, a smart trader would start with the basics: study numbers. You’d comb through earnings reports, check margins, scan the balance sheet, and dissect the leadership team like a frog in high school Biology class. You’d look at market saturation, regulatory risks, revenue growth, and compare it all to the S&P like a priest judging souls at the Pearly Gates. A solid investment had to earn your respect. But that was before. 

Now? Now you’ve got to factor in the wild card that no spreadsheet can quantify — the raw, unfiltered chaos of a single tweet. A billion-dollar company’s stock can spike or crash before the market even figures out if he was being serious or sarcastic. Tariffs, tax cuts, NATO tantrums — even breakfast choices might move the markets. And while you’re sweating over your trailing P/E ratio, Trump might be out there pumping DOGE on Truth Social while pushing a “Big Beautiful Spending Bill” that makes MMT look like a get out of debt seminar.  

Here’s a perfect example of a post that rocked Apple stock a few days ago. 

Source: Truth Social 

Yes, fundamentals still matter — but they don’t tell the whole story. You’ve got to squint through the political fog, parse out policy from performance art, and ask the questions no CFA textbook ever prepared you for. How does a devalued dollar suddenly become patriotic? Why does fiscal discipline now involve throwing Elon Musk into a federal audit meeting? And why is the interest on our national debt now bigger than the entire security budget… while we keep writing blank checks for tanks, rockets, and bureaucratic blunders dressed in red, white, and blue? The budget tells the tale, but the punchline is written in DOGE. 

I’m curious what ever happened to the DOGE audit of Gold at Fort Knox that Elon was going to stream on X?  Is the gold there?  No answers and that was two months ago. 

Anyone else notice that DOGE never even approached waste in the PENTAGON budget?   

One of the most maddening things about trading in the age of Trump isn’t the tweets, the posts, the tariffs, the tantrums.  

It’s trying to make sense of all the market flip-flops. 

One week the dollar’s strong. The next, it’s tanking. Yields spike, then collapse. Spending gets called “reckless” — right before both parties pass another trillion-dollar monstrosity wrapped in patriotic ribbon and fireworks. And somewhere in the middle of this fiscal fire drill, the bond market starts screaming fire while the Fed pretends everything’s peachy. 

It’s chaos. 

And yet, this is the world traders must now navigate. 

Here are some of the most gut-punching macro questions every serious analyst and trader is asking right now. If your head explodes confronting any of these questions, you’ll better understand why assets like Gold and Bitcoin are running the table. 

  1. How high do bond yields have to go before they break the entire system? 
  1. Can the Fed keep rates elevated without detonating the Treasury market? 
  1. What happens when interest payments on the national debt crowd out everything else? 
  1. Is the dollar still a safe haven, or just the cleanest dirty shirt in the currency closet? 
  1. How much longer will foreign buyers keep showing up to these debt auctions? 
  1. Will the next round of stimulus finally push inflation into “no turning back” territory? 
  1. Is de-dollarization a slow leak… or a ticking time bomb? 
  1. How long can the Fed suppress the real cost of money before the dam breaks? 
  1. Will the “Big, Beautiful Spending Bill” end in boom, bust, or banana republic economics? 
  1. And the biggest one of all: What happens when the bond market investors who sell government bonds wake up and say, ‘No more’? 

Now, if all that makes your head spin, you’re not alone. For those of us who aren’t inside the DC money machine — who don’t get the morning briefing from Scott Bessent, Jay Powell, or the President himself — we don’t try to outguess it. 

We just follow the real tell in this story. 

Gold and Bitcoin. 

Not because they’re ‘sexy.’ Not because they’re perfect. But because while the suits in Washington treat the economy like a busted GPS — “Recalculating… Recalculating…” — Gold and Bitcoin have been quietly kicking the stock market’s butt. 

They don’t lie. They don’t waffle. They don’t suddenly rewrite the rules mid-game. 

In a world where the road signs keep changing and the drivers are blindfolded with a bottle of bourbon in one hand and a campaign promise in the other… Gold and Bitcoin are the last two vehicles still driving in a manner that protect our purchasing power. 

So yeah… watch the bond market. Ask the hard questions. But if you’re trying to survive this wreck? 

Follow the money that holds its value.  

I’ve been ringing the alarm bells on this “Big Beautiful Bill” being rammed through Congress. This thing is a fiscal nuke. We’re talking $20 trillion more in debt over the next decade. And if that doesn’t send a chill down your spine, maybe Moody’s recent downgrade of U.S. debt will.  

But let’s be honest… the real insanity is that we even had an investment-grade rating in the first place with debt sitting at 125% of GDP. That’s like giving a junkie a platinum credit card and telling him he’s still “financially responsible.” 

Ray Dalio, one of the few billionaires who still has a working brain, gets it. He’s worried — and he should be.  

You wanna know why the three big credit rating agencies — Moody’s, S&P, and Fitch — are still giving Uncle Sam an AA1 rating even though we’re drowning in debt and spending like a sailor on leave? 

Simple. 

They’re banking on the money printer. 

That’s it. That’s the whole argument.  

Not productivity, fiscal discipline, not a balanced budget. Just this: “Hey, don’t worry. The U.S. can always pay you back… because they can always print more dollars.” 

Well, no kidding. Of course, we can “pay it back” when we’re the ones creating the currency out of thin air. But here’s what they won’t say out loud, it might not be worth anything by the time you get it back. 

Because when a nation funds itself by running the printing press 24/7, it’s not repaying you with real money — it’s giving you Monopoly money. Technically green, practically worthless. 

And that, my friends, is the dirtiest little secret in modern finance. The rating agencies aren’t blind. They’re just playing along. Because admitting the truth — that printing money to pay off creditors is just a slow-motion default — would bring the whole house of cards down. 

So, they smile, nod, and stamp “AA1” on the balance sheet… while the purchasing power of your repayment goes up in smoke. 

Don’t fall for it.  

Because the fantasy that a country can’t default as long as it has a money printer is pure, grade-A, certified smoke and mirrors.  

Sure, we can print enough dollars to pay interest. Forever, even. But here’s what the rating agencies ignore — paying off your debts with printed money is just another form of default. You’re stiffing your creditors slowly and silently, with a currency that gets weaker by the year. And that won’t end well. 

That’s why I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again — be careful with Treasuries. Yeah, they’ll keep paying you interest. But that interest won’t even keep up with inflation, let alone preserve your wealth. You could bleed purchasing power every year until those bonds go belly-up. And then? You’re looking at a full-on capital wipeout. 

The second your government’s interest payments outstrip its tax revenue, the whole system is faulty. 

And now let’s talk rates. The 30-year mortgage is back flirting with 7%, a level we can’t sustain. The Fed’s out here whispering sweet nothings about rate cuts, but interest rates keep climbing anyway. That’s not just a red flag — that’s a five-alarm fire. Because when the Fed loses control of the bond market, the whole financial system starts to unravel. Just look at Japan if you want to see how bad this can get. Their 40- and 50-year bonds are collapsing. Yields used to be basically zero. Now they’re pushing past 3% and climbing. 

This isn’t just a Japan problem. It’s a world problem. The U.S., Japan, Europe, the UK, China — we’re all marching in lockstep off the same financial cliff. Governments are cornered. Rates go up, debt explodes, and no one can stop it. We’re maybe in the third inning right now. But wait ‘til the seventh. We’re heading into territory nobody alive has ever seen — global currency crises stacked on top of each other like dominoes. 

Will America come out better than Europe? Maybe.  

But don’t kid yourself — we’re still heading straight into a storm. 

In the world of high finance, serious investors understand one fundamental truth: the trend isn’t just your friend — it’s your compass. And the most important trend of all? The primary one — the long arc of market behavior that transcends daily headlines and quarterly earnings. 

To that end, I’ve laid out a performance grid measuring returns from five pivotal milestones: the aftermath of the 1987 crash, the dawn of the new millennium, the onset of the Great Financial Crisis, the trailing ten and five years, and finally, the past 52 weeks.  

Each snapshot offers a different lens, a different story. And while Bitcoin didn’t officially begin trading until 2009, its absence from earlier periods only makes its later performance even more remarkable. 

When I study this performance grid I see three complete different epochs of financial history. 

Now, here’s where it gets interesting. Since Black Monday in ’87, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has been an unrelenting force — proof positive that equity ownership remains one of the great compounding engines of wealth. But look closer: since the turn of the century, Gold — once dismissed as a relic — has dramatically outperformed the Dow. That’s not a typo. That’s a question: How does that happen? 

From the depths of the 2008 crisis, Gold and the Dow have tracked each other remarkably closely — not diverging but marching in near-lockstep.  

And that opens the door to a larger question that hangs over everything: Are these gains in equities real? Or are they the illusion created by the quiet, relentless debasement of the U.S. dollar? 

Then there’s Bitcoin. Over the last decade — forget the headlines, forget the volatility — it has absolutely crushed both Gold and stocks in terms of raw performance. Whatever you believe about digital assets, that fact alone demands attention. 

Because if money is changing, and the way we store value is changing, then the whole game — how we define investment, protection, and return — might be changing too. 

If you want to survive as a trader in this revisionist fairy tale of a market, you better learn to think for yourself. And I don’t mean scrolling X or Instagram and parroting what some talking head said on CNBC. I mean real critical thinking — the kind where you question everything. Every news story. Every chart. Every earnings report. Every government number that comes down the pipeline like it was blessed by the gods. 

Because here’s the secret: most of what you’ve been taught about markets, economics, and even history is fiction, a straight line of noble heroes and brave decisions—when in reality, it’s a blood-soaked carnival ride of lies, coverups, and power grabs. 

Why should you care as a trader?  

Because the same sleight of hand used to sanitize history is baked into every economic data release you’re trading off of today. CPI numbers? Massaged. GDP stats? Seasonally adjusted into fantasy. Unemployment rates? A shell game. You need to see through the fog — and that’s where VantagePoint’s artificial intelligence becomes your edge. 

AI trading software doesn’t get fooled by fairy tales. It doesn’t care what some central bankers say, it analyzes what the data is actually doing. It sees the patterns behind the curtain, the money flows beneath the headlines. It doesn’t fall for the trap of chasing hype or getting suckered into the same losing trades the crowd is drooling over. 

Here is a chart of the most recent A.I. forecasts for Tesla ($TSLA) and Microsoft ($MSFT) which illustrates the power of the VantagePoint A.I. software suite. 

That’s what VantagePoint’s A.I. delivers.  

It’s like having a radar system that shows you exactly where the smart money’s going… before it gets there. 

Ask yourself: if a machine can crush the best human players in chess, poker, and Go… why wouldn’t it mop the floor with emotional traders clinging to outdated indicators and hope-as-a-strategy? 

VantagePoint gives you the unfair advantage. It cuts out the crap. It eliminates the noise. It puts the edge back where it belongs — in your hands. Tens of thousands of traders have already had that moment where everything clicked. The fog lifted. The market started making sense. And they never looked back. 

You want to see it in action? We’ll show you. Live. No hype.  

Join us for a free live training and learn how to trade with artificial intelligence. 

And no—it’s not magic. 

 It’s machine learning.   

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