I've started making a few non-financial changes to put me in a better position. I'm organising to move my work to a lower cost of living area, which will put me in a position that buying a property should be within reach. I've also upgraded my vehicle to a newer model (old car was 2006, just purchased a 2019 model). It's a small van instead of a car, with the potential to be made into a micro-camper which will give me some cheaper holiday options in the future.

I had good timing selling some ETFs to get cash for the car (and because the move means my timeframe for wanting a house deposit have been moved forward). It wasn't at the peak of prices, but was before most of the drop.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 days ago (3 children)

Here in the UK, the new tax year just started. I've sent the order to fill up my ISA for the year. Here's hoping that Trump reverses the tariffs shortly after my buy order gets fulfilled(!)

The tariffs are a bit scary for me. They seem like a way to directly introduce inefficiency and waste into the market. I guess index funds are based on the assumption that over the long term, markets get more efficient and this makes the stock prices go up.

I am still confident that will continue to happen in the long term. But the talk about "dismantling globalism" does make me wonder if any of these underlying assumptions are going to be proven wrong eventually.

I still think common sense will prevail "eventually". These tariffs give a rallying point for the opposition in the US to start kicking in, and rationality to return. But it is funny how, with each downturn, you start to think "maybe this time it's different"!

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 days ago

For some reason, everyone always assumes the next downturn will look exactly like the last one. And then they're always surprised when it's caused by something completely different, so they assume this is the time everything will go to zero.

Maybe someday they will be right and this is the time everything collapses. Or maybe it won't. But it is different every time. Either way, I hate that the US gov is intentionally crashing the market for stupid reasons. I can only hope it is temporary and people aren't too badly hurt by this.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 days ago

I think it's going to take months for this tariff situation to stabilize. For us here in the US, economists are already predicting -1% gross domestic product growth, so if that happens, we're halfway into a recession. The tariffs will be enough to push us over the edge.

It's going to turn into a game of chicken to see who comes to the table first asking for a deal. If the European and Asian countries stick together, they can outlast Trump.

Trump is going to be under pressure to get this resolved before the mid-term elections next November. US presidents typically lose a few Senate and House seats in mid-terms, but after tanking the economy for no good reason, this could be a disaster for his party.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

dismantling globalism

That's not a thing, this is largely a ploy to reorient production to the US and away from countries we don't trust as much. That will probably decrease profits (and therefore temper stock valuations), but it's also probably quite temporary. But even if it's a long-term thing, markets will likely still increase long-term, just at a slower pace since cheap labor will increasingly not be a thing.

But even that's a pretty big assumption that the next President doesn't just reverse this trend as well. Tariffs are incredibly easy for the President to change, and that's been proven by Trump doing exactly that through EO.

But yeah, I don't think "this time it's different," but I was tempted to adjust my portfolio. And I still might. I'm just grateful that I rebalanced my portfolio in December, moving some small percent of my assets from US to international, so I wasn't hit quite as hard as I would otherwise, but I also introduced a small value tilt over the preceding few months, which got hit harder. I'm still long on my strategy, though I may adjust my US exposure down a bit if the tariffs seem to be sticking long-term, since I no longer have a reason to overweight the US (I'm currently 70% US, 30% international, w/ a 10% tilt to small cap value within that split).

That said, I'm a US citizen, so things could very well look differently from a UK perspective.

Regardless, strap in because I expect it to be a bumpy ride over the rest of Trump's term. I feel like I'm buying at a discount for ongoing contributions, but I guess we'll see if that ends up being the case.