Equity futures sink, gold rises after Trump imposes tariffs

• Gold gains ground on safe-haven flows
• Treasury yields fall while U.S. dollar loses ground
• Trading choppy after Trump tariff announcements
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Equity futures fell on Wednesday after the U.S. market close while safe-haven gold and bond prices rose as investors worried about U.S. President Donald Trump's announcement of 10% tariffs on all imports, with much higher rates for some trading partners.

S&P 500 E-minis stock futures initially rose after Wall Street indexes closed the regular session higher, but then lost ground as Trump went into detail about his tariff plans in a White House Rose Garden event.

S&P 500 futures ES1! fell 1.6% as Trump spoke while Nasdaq futures NQ1! fell 2.4%.

Trump, who has referred to Wednesday as "Liberation Day", outlined a range of levies for different countries including 34% tariffs on imports from China, 20% tariffs on imports from the European Union and 24% on imports from Japan.

He also announced 25% autos tariffs covering cars, light trucks, engines and other auto parts.

"When the press conference first started the President said tariffs would start with a 10% baseline across the board. That was better than expected, which was why we saw futures rallying," said Chris Zaccarelli, chief investment officer at Northlight Asset Management in Charlotte, North Carolina.

"But once he got to specifics and started giving examples which were significantly higher than 10%, that's when futures turned around and went negative," Zaccarelli added.

"In the short run tariffs are going to increase costs and reduce corporate profits. If we have a reshaping of the economy, I'm sure markets will have a different judgment, but the short-term knee-jerk reaction is to the initial price hikes."

Investor focus on Wednesday had been firmly on the scheduled announcement of reciprocal levies.

Before the announcement, the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJI had closed up 235.36 points, or up 0.56%, to 42,225.32, while the S&P 500 SPX rose 37.90 points, or 0.67%, to 5,670.97. The Nasdaq Composite IXIC had ended the session up 151.16 points, or 0.87%, at 17,601.05.

MSCI's gauge of stocks across the globe EURONEXT:IACWI rose 3.96 points, or 0.48%, to 836.11.

But some investors noted that the market's reaction going forward would depend on responses from U.S. trading partners.

"We've just got one side of the story, which is what we're doing. And the other side of the story is how other countries respond to what we're doing," said Walter Todd, chief investment officer at Greenwood Capital in Greenwood, South Carolina.

Todd said that would be "a big component to how the market ultimately digests what is being said right now."

Gold prices pushed closer to record highs, boosted by safe-haven inflows after the announcements.

Spot gold GOLD rose 0.64% to $3,130.38 an ounce. U.S. gold futures (GCc1) rose 1.3% to $3,159.30 an ounce.

In fixed income, U.S. Treasury yields fell, with two-year yields dropping to their lowest level in three weeks after Trump announced the tariffs.

The yield on benchmark U.S. 10-year notes US10Y fell 1.6 basis points to 4.14%, from 4.156% late on Tuesday. The 30-year bond (US30YT=RR) yield fell 0.5 basis points to 4.5098% from 4.515% late on Tuesday.

The 2-year note (US2YT=RR) yield, which typically moves in step with interest rate expectations for the Federal Reserve, fell 0.5 basis points to 3.858%, from 3.863% late on Tuesday.

In currencies, the dollar lost ground.

After the announcements, the euro EURUSD was up 0.38% at $1.0834 while sterling GBPUSD strengthened 0.54% to $1.2989.

Against the Japanese yen USDJPY, the dollar weakened 0.17% to 149.36.

In energy markets, oil prices, which had settled the regular session higher, lost ground after the tariff news stoked concerns that a global trade war may dampen demand for crude.

U.S. crude CL1! fell 0.27% to $71.00 a barrel after settling up 0.72%, while Brent BRN1! fell to $74.07 per barrel, down 0.59% after settling at $74.95 per barrel.

See the article here: https://www.tradingview.com/news/reuters.com,2025:newsml_L2N3QG114:0-equity-futures-sink-gold-rises-after-trump-imposes-tariffs/

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Saylor’s Strategy $MSTR Selling Strife to Investors

Saylor's Strategy, and the trouble with Strife

Saylor's latest scheme's name, may say it all!  It's called Series A Perpetual Strife Preferred Stock!

As Alphaville says,

"Strife"? "Perpetual Strife"? Matt Levine at Bloomberg had initially suspected a typo when he read it, but 23 references in the document suggest not. Maybe it's an inside joke — the kind of thing that sounds clever at 5am at an after-party. Or perhaps it's an unwittingly honest nod to the drama surrounding the company's relentless bitcoin accumulation.

For one, it's not your typical (Micro)Strategy dilutive equity issuance; unlike the perpetual strike preferred securities ( $STRK ), it is not convertible into common stock.

So it's just strife for you!

(More than a) Fairlife, Some would say they're Milking it

Coke paid about $1 billion in 2020 to buy the majority 57% stake in the Fairlife Milk JV formed in 2012, and agreed to performance-based payments through this year, initially estimated at $320 million. 

The final tally is expected to be $6 billion, a projection that surged 275% in the past two years, and will boost the Fairlife price tag to about $7.4 billion over five years —making it the largest brand acquisition in the company's 133-year-old history.

See the story on Bloomberg here: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2025-02-10/coke-owned-fairlife-milk-is-soda-giant-s-fastest-growing-brand?

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Era of Free Money Comes to an End for Japan

Rising interest rates, sustained inflation and potential wave of wage increases this spring are fueling relentless sell-off in Japan's government debt, bringing 10-year Japanese government bond yields to 1.31% Friday, after this year's rise of 0.21 percentage points, and a big jump in 2024.

Core inflation in December rose 3%—fastest annual pace in 16 months.

"[For Japan] inflation is for real this time," said James Novotny, an investment manager at Jupiter Asset Management.

Speculation is intensifying that the BOJ could raise rates in July and that the terminal rate might be higher than 1 per cent currently expected. —You can be sure it will be!

See the article in the FT here:

Japan's borrowing costs soar to 14-year high

https://on.ft.com/3CEkHOv

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“I Was Hounded, Day In, Day Out.”

Alice Nderitu, @UN’s former special adviser on the prevention of genocide, on her contentious tenure.

“It’s instructive that this never happened for any other war. Not for Ukraine, not for Sudan, not for D.R.C. [Democratic Republic of Congo], not for Myanmar,” she says. “The focus was always Israel.”

“I Was Hounded, Day In, Day Out. Bullied, hounded, with protection from nobody.”

Read the full interview on AirMail here:

https://airmail.news/issues/2025-2-1/i-was-hounded-day-in-day-out

Hamas’ propaganda brainwashing has done its trick

The “narrative” has changed for Hamas now that there’s a ceasefire. They no longer need to be the "victim". Now, it’s all about projecting strength.

Some thoughts from Andrew Fox on the current situation in Gaza and what we may expect from Hamas going forward.

The IDF & Gaza

"Why the sudden change? Why do Hamas no longer care what the world sees?

DeepSeek Buzz Sends Tech Stocks on Track for $1 Trillion Wipeout

Darling AI chip producer Nvidia Corp., whose shares soared ninefold in the past two years making it the highest-valued company in the world, was at one point looking at an 11.5% drop in their shares in the premarket, zapping ~$350 billion in market value. It's recovered a bit since. Let's see what the opening brings.

See more here:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-27/nasdaq-futures-slump-as-china-s-deepseek-sparks-us-tech-concern

https://www.tradingview.com/symbols/NVDA/?utm_source=iosapp&utm_medium=spotlight

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