Inaugural Newsletter and Trades for May

Trump, tariffs, no tariffs, what happened?

Professionally managed investment portfolios routinely provide their investors with regular updates. In line with this practice, this substack will deliver timely communications on the performance, strategy, and key developments of its activist-focused portfolio. These updates aim to keep our readers (and in the future our investor base) well-informed and engaged.

1. Update

It has been one helluva couple of months. Historians in the future would probably look back and laughed at the stupidity of it all. Well, what happened? I think we are all familiar. Some lunatic President launched a tariff charade, caused the markets to crash and then he chickened out, rolled back the tariffs. Markets, being markets, retracted almost all the losses as if nothing happened, only to realize, something did change and recession is coming.

This is where we are now.

For the record, since the start of the year, S&P500 returned 1.6%, the Nikkei -4.1% and the Straits Times Index (STI) returned 0.2%. But that masked the volatility that happened during the tariff tantrums where markets fell almost 20%, causing widespread panic. This author blogged about how this marked a major turning point in global world order. De-globalization will tear trade, economies and markets apart. Well, that’s the thing with prediction, so far, I’m wrong. Although… you have been warned.