#Oil prices are rising despite the dollar firming up. If the dollar falls there will be real inflationary pressure which might justify some of the actions to try to get Saudi Arabia to ship more oil. Trying to get them to ship more oil and tapping our reserves already is foolish because we have no way to alleviate the pain if something really goes wrong.

The real threat is the bubbles caused by Chinese investment buying will pop as they stop buying or sell their investments as trade tensions rise. It is already starting to happen.

Good call unless the trade war talk cools off. It seems already China money is not flowing into US housing which will stop the absurd price appreciation in California among other places.

What tariffs does the EU have with the US?

In some ways investors were dumb not to sell after the scandal. Obviously Mark Zuckenberg knew it was bad and dumped, but this was public news. It may be hard to prove he sold on foresight on the earnings and not due to the very public reason why its growth is slowing down.

I think the bears will only get to enjoy 1 FANG stock missing this quarter, although if I had to guess another I'd guess Facebook. Generally, you can surmise stocks that may have a big pullback by them running well above trend in the short term.

Sadly Trumps threats have been so common no one really takes them to mind until they are implemented. By then he undermines himself by stating his potential intentions in the worst possible light so everyone can develop counters to his actions. All around, it is a terrible negotiating stance although saying everything is on the table tends to be a stronger play usually, thus you can't argue with his starting standpoint. Sadly, what matters is not your starting position but your ending one.

Already the Fed seems to now be the scapegoat for the potential economic repercussions of a trade war. And this is coming before anything major is implemented. In the meantime, China is not devaluation, his actions have caused the RMB to depreciate just like his debt budgeting is putting the US on bad footing if we head into a trade war where you want less debt not more if your enemy is your biggest creditor.

Great analysis. The administration can give the market relief at any time by dropping the trade war issue and moving on to another topic. Hopefully they will move on from complaining about the summer oil price issue as well given oil price drops aren't particularly good for the US being it is such a big oil producer itself. In fact, the oil price surge is mainly due to the US with Iran sanctions and slowdowns in domestic production increases caused mainly by drops in oil development spending.

Housing prices are rising with the asset bubble, however building more housing tends to incur debt which is a thing everyone company is now starting to avoid, except when it is to give them leverage to be able to pay off their shorter term debt.

Yes in any tightening the first ball to drop is usually some debt stricken emerging market country.