A New Trade Deal, A New Market, A New Pope

We've got a new Pope. There's a new trade deal with the UK. Those are certain. Less certain - to say the least - is whether we're getting ourselves a new market.

New market? Well, these days things bounce up and down so much it almost seems that's the case from day to day. For those who tie their emotions into the financial media, it must be a bit of a drain, no? 

One day a plunge. Then a moon shot. Each day seems to hearken to either Bear or Bull, Recession or Strong Economy.

The Big Orange Guy lends a big hand in all this. First it's this way with tariffs, then that. Cut the excess from government, fire legions of bureaucratic employees, de-fund this or that government funded endeavor...well, we all know the drill by now. Lawsuits fly, courts get involved. Decisions go this way and that.

Isn't this the essence of chaos?

But back to the new Market and the new Pope.

This New Market idea springs from the lips of said Big Orange Guy. Our country is on the cusp of a Golden Age. The stock market will soar to the stars. Well, maybe not now...er, maybe not in the next few months...well, maybe it'll take some years before things really get going. Meanwhile...

So we all know the "meanwhile" possibilities: Recession, Bear Market in Stocks. Yeah, it hasn't gone away.

Despite it all, let's give the Golden Age a nod. Why not? You never know how things will unfold, right? After all, with all the talk about "deals" there's finally a couple of real ones: the mining thing with the Ukrainian government and whatever that deal is with the UK government. And there's surely going to continuing hemming and hawing with tariffs. And when 100% becomes 50% it'll spike the stock market and seem like Nirvana can't be far away.

Maybe the new Pope thing is something like that. When the previous guy stepped onto the balcony, he didn't wear the traditional red cape; just white. Seemed to signal that things were going to change (as they did, radically) from the previous Pope. Now this guy wears the traditional thing and says he was best buddies with the previous Pope, using some of the signature language the deceased used to establish a connection. 

Naturally, the media babblers grabbed whatever was thrown at them and reacted in their typical uninformed way. Lots of oohs, aahs, and smiles. But what did you expect?

He wore that traditional cape: Is he a traditional guy? He connected with the previous Pope, specifically endorsing stuff that rattled the traditionalists: Is the cape thing just a distraction to throw off the traditionalists? You get the drift here. Every little word and gesture will be dissected and "interpreted" by those who hold themselves out as some sort of expert.

And it's just like what we hear coming from the experts on the economy and the markets. Every little word and gesture from the Big Orange Guy, the Fed Guy, every big swing from the stock market, every government statistic that show a slowing or sustaining of the economy (depending on the day) will be parsed similarly with similar babbling.

Up, down, good, bad, old, new: the opposites push and pull. The emotions follow (if we let them). It all leads to an exhausting fruitless feeling. 

Just pull back. Seriously, pull back. We tried to do that with our recent post re the "4th Turning." Maybe read that one again. Indeed Neil Howe, the surviving member of the original duo that wrote the first book in the '90s that outlined the whole "Turning" thing, has been quite public in recent years. We do catch some of his opining. Having read the book, we do see consistency with the principals outlined and his comments on current events. So what's his assessment of the here and now?

Simply put, we're in the thick of the 4th Turning, which likely started some time around the so-called GFC (Great Financial Crisis in 2007-2008). And as these turning go, they last a couple of decades. It's not a one and done thing. So that means we don't get out of this until maybe the 2030s. And until then, we get more unraveling, leading at some point to some rejiggering - maybe something akin to that Great Re-set we've been reading and hearing about for some years now. 

So maybe that's a good place to sit ourselves, away from the pushing and pulling, in the midst of all the swirl of trade deals, tariffs, markets, and popes.