After a brief period of not being the worst stock market in the world, the US has reclaimed the bottom spot, with a year-to-date loss of -6.1%, vs. -2.4% for EAFE, the best measure of the performance of non-US markets. The Russell 2000 index of mid-cap, US economy-centric stocks is only down by about -1% ytd, however, outpacing the S&P 500, EAFE and NASDAQ. I think this is more a result of years of the Russell underperforming the rest of the market than any special merit in holding domestic mid-caps. Sort of a variation on you can’t fall off the floor.

The new negative issue for US stocks, as I see it, is not just the attack on Iran, right or wrong, but the shocking botch that the administration has made of it. This stands in stark contrast with the success of the much smaller-scale raid on Venezuela.

How so? Paul Krugman observes that Secretary Hegseth seems to have a sharp distaste both for subordinates who are smarter than he is and/or who are women, and has been eliminating both from his inner circle, or from the DoD entirely. Therefore, the military isn’t nearly as intelligent as it has usually been. Maybe that’s the problem. I’m stunned that no one in authority seems to have checked to see whether we had enough anti-drone ammunition before starting the attack (Hegseth implies as much by blaming the apparent shortfall that has quickly developed on Joe Biden). I also imagine that if anyone in the administration thought that Iran would do the obvious by closing the Straits of Hormuz, Washington would have filled the Strategic Oil Reserve before commencing its attack.

Even before Iran, the administration had put in place an economic policy that seeks to spur economic growth through the curious (deeply unsound might be a better word) plan of shrinking the workforce through ICE arrests and deportations, while also lowering the skill level of American workers by attacking higher education. For investors, this has meant reimagining the US stock market as a barbell of third-world style export-oriented manufacturing on one side, and multinational technology innovators based in the US but who could relocate at the drop of a hat.

As a result of these odd administration actions, for the moment, at least, the US seems to be striking both foreign- and domestic-based investors as less the land of the free and more a rudderless rogue state.

The obvious move is to tilt holdings away from Wall Street to other markets.

The way I’ve typically phrased the mental exercise of separating what’s crucial in evaluating the prospects for a given publicly-traded stock or group of stocks vs. the ethics of a given situation is:

—–I’m taking off my hat as a human being and putting on my hat as an investor.

To be sure, the assassination of foreign leaders, the killing of citizens protesting ICE violence, the imprisonment of domestic workers based on the color of their skin–all of this done with Congressional silence signaling approval–is steadily eroding the brand value of the US as the land of the free and the home of the brave. This situation isn’t being helped, either, by the apparent cognitive decline of the president or the sometimes-stunning ineptitude of those he’s picked to be his closest advisors. And there’s the astonishing, to me anyway, influence over public figures that the Epstein files are revealing Epstein to have had–with the administration’s foot-dragging on the full release ordered by Congress suggesting that all Epstein’s politically powerful clients have not yet been revealed.

Still, there are near-term economic issues, I think, that will have a more immediate and forceful impact on the stock market than the reputational black eye Washington is giving itself (and which will ultimately result in a lower PE being assigned to US-based earnings). They are:

–the (unanticipated?) higher oil price, which will be a plus for the earnings of larger oil and gas exploration companies, but a negative for consumers, and more so for oil refiners and marketers

–the increased domestic cost of living being relentlessly created by the administration, through tariffs, shrinkage of the workforce (pushing wages higher, as well as the cost of everyday necessities), and now the rising price of heating fuel and gasoline. The key here will be to assess where people will continue to buy, vs. where they’ll trade down and where they’ll simply not spend.

–the administration’s apparent desire from the outset to force domestic interest rates down. The idea, I guess, has been to lower the cost of the federal deficit–essentially shifting some of the burden to Treasury holders, many of them foreign central banks. Foreign holders of Treasuries, however, caught on immediately, and hedged their currency risk. So the result has been a sharp decline in the world value of the dollar, instead, making everything Americans buy from abroad–from food to clothes to foreign vacations–something like 15% more expensive.

Last year, the key to stock market success was to own companies with dollar-based costs and foreign currency revenues. Today, however, the rocket ship ride those stocks were on seems to me to be over. Prices are up a lot and companies are presumably going to find it hard to surprise on the upside any more. One thing they continue to have going for them, however, is that they aren’t totally reliant on a sagging US economy. Wall Street attention appears to be centered so far this year on domestic-oriented losers instead–on the idea that earnings news is going to be worse than expected, and for longer.

A year ago, I’d been thinking that woe begotten domestic-oriented companies might end up being acquisition targets, given the sharp drop in the $US. That may still happen. I’m no longer betting it will, though. It’s not clear to me that a US brand has the value in the world market that it did a year or two ago. And, of course, someone coming here to do due diligence has to think there’s a chance of being shot, or ending up in El Salvador, or both. So can a thorough assessment of a target actually get done?

A number of little things about the war seem strange to me, in addition to the BIG one that there appears to me to be no clear rationale for it.

What I find odd:

–Secretary Hegseth is reported to have explained recently that Straits of Hormuz are actually open for traffic–except for the incovenience that Iran is attempting to destroy any ships making the attempt

–Mr. Hegseth has apparently also explained that the US is running out of anti-drone munitions because former President Biden used a lot in defense of Ukraine against Russian attack. This lack apparently comes as a surprise. The oddity I find here is that the first thing any combat commandcr does when taking over a new unit is to inventory the supplies and equipment, to make sure that what’s supposed to be there–like, say, personnel carriers or rifles or ammunition–actually is. Either no one bothered to do what any captain/first sergeant worth his salt would when the Trump administration took over, or maybe no one connected the dots to conclude that anti-drone rockets might be needed, since Iran, a big war drone manufacturer (and supplier to Russia), might actually use drones itself

–the belated search for minesweeping ships–the US Navy apparently has none–to clear the Straits of Hormuz of mines Iran has placed there. implying this came as a surprise to US war planners.

The stock market implications of all this are indirect, I think: they have an effect on the USA brand.

a hypothetical celebrity death match…

…pitting Trump vs. Hegseth, reality TV star vs. television news host, with the less cognitively gifted winning.

I would find this one extremely hard to call.

If press reports are accurate, and I tend to think they are, the US and Israel made a surprise attack on Iran with the objective of killing that country’s long-time leader. The hoped for result was regime change, with the new people more favorably disposed to both attackers. ,,,a plan straight out of the Vladimir Lenin’s 1902 playbook, “What Is To Be Done”. It seems the opposite has happened, with the new leader (understandably) more anti-US.

Apparently also left out of whatever planning was done was the possibility that Iran would initiate the kind of drone warfare we’ve seen in Ukraine, even though Russian drones come from Iran (the US apparently has limited anti-drone rocket supplies) or that it would lay mines that would close the Straits of Hormuz, a key waterway for the transport not only for oil (20% of the world’s supply passes through it) but also for natural gas and a lot of other stuff (the US Navy has no minesweepers, and didn’t think to ask allies who have them beforehand).

One result of the attack so far, although this can’t possibly have been a front-row objective, is that the US is no longer the worst-performing stock market in the world, as it has been since the Trump inauguration. Over the past month, the S&P 500 is down by around 5% …but the EAFE index of non-US stocks is off by almost 10%.

The reason is relatively simple, I think. Europe and Japan form the core of EAFE. Both areas are heavily dependent on imported fossil fuels. So they are being hit both by higher prices since the attack began and lack of availability of oil and gas. The US, with large domestic supplies of both, is not being hurt as badly by this…and I think the premium US stocks have traditionally received as being part of the land of the free and the home of the brave has long since been eroded by ICE. So the striking lack of forethought by the deathmatch opponents probably hasn’t had too much of an effect.

For you and me, I think the key will be deciding when to shift portfolio weightings into now-battered EAFE names.

Starting with a footnote: publicly traded companies in the US are required to disclose the regional breakout of their sales. My experience is that this mandate is honored more in the letter than the spirit, as far as detailed compliance goes. The reason? ,,,industry competitors can read 10ks as well as you and I can, and companies are loathe to reveal sensitive information about the sweet spots for sales and earnings growth.

A reasonable guess, or at least the one I use, is that multinationals are 50/50 inside and outside the US.

The two main Trump economic initiatives, as I see them:

–whether intentionally or not, to lower the world value of the currency, meaning foreign creditors will be repaid in dollars that are worth less than anticipated

–replace taxes on income with taxes on consumption (i.e., tariffs), thereby shifting the burden of paying for the federal government away from the ultra-wealthy to ordinary citizens.

The result of these two would presumably be to make everyone poorer, but with ordinary people hurt the most. Shrinking the domestic workforce through ICE, also a key goal, only makes the situation worse.

looking at stocks:

–last year, the most important key to investing success was to own companies with costs in $US and revenues elsewhere. I think this continues to be the case, although the very large gains to be had 12 months ago are probably behind us

–we’re beginning to see negative surprises among consumer stocks. As I see it, these stem from two sources. The first is trading down to less expensive items, which has been happening pretty much since the inauguration. A stock example would be:

supermarkets to Walmart

Walmart to high-end dollar stores

high-end to low-end dollar stores

low-end to off-the-radar stores

stores to raising vegetables or poultry in the back year.

The main point is continuing to consume but finding lower-price outlets.

The second is postponing purchases–like getting another year out of an old car, or sewing up a hole in a jacket rather than getting a new one.

A very old Wall Street cliche is that in bad times consumers shift from large purchases to smaller pick-me-ups that make one feel better.

Recent consumer company reporting suggests to me that even this last is tailing off. If so, it could be signaling another down leg for the domestic economy that will appear in official statistics in a month or tow.