Markets had two days to sit with a threat before they got to trade it — Trump posted on Friday that talks with the European Union were “going nowhere” and threatened a 50 percent tariff on all EU imports starting June 1, then spent the Memorial Day weekend walking it back.
The Treasury tried to sell $16 billion of twenty-year bonds on Wednesday afternoon, and the buyers who showed up wanted more yield than the market had priced them for — the auction cleared at a high yield of 5.047 percent, the highest since the bond’s reintroduction.
Moody’s waited until after the closing bell on Friday, May 16, to drop the notice — the United States no longer holds a perfect credit rating from any of the three major agencies, the downgrade to Aa1 from Aaa ending a run that had lasted since 1917.
One day after the words “historic trade deal” left the Oval Office, the fine print for imported cars was still being written — on May 8, President Trump and Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced the general terms of a US-UK Economic Prosperity Deal, and it moved not a single ship, only a quota.
On Wednesday, the Federal Open Market Committee voted twelve to zero to hold the benchmark rate at 4.25 to 4.50 percent, the fourth straight meeting without a move since the cut in December — and buried inside the same two-page statement was a word the Fed had avoided since the Volcker era.
HSBC reported the kind of quarter that looks solid until the warning line starts working on the balance sheet.
Gold sold off when Beijing let the market imagine a door in the wall.
ASML put the warning where the chip war could not ignore it.
Beijing answered the tariff strike with a number designed to stop trade lanes cold.
Crude traded like demand had been cut off at the valve.
The order landed on 2 April, and by the next session the market had stripped the paint off the word liberation.
The Fed left the target range at 4.25% to 4.50%, and the room heard the part it was supposed to hear.
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