The two best (i.e., only reliable ones) news services for investors, in my view, are the UK’s Financial Times and its parent the NIkkei News (Nihon Keizai Shimbun). They’re analytic, professional, have knowledgeable writers and, in the case of the Nikkei, are–I think–the unofficial way in Japan of informing the market of new developments.

I’ve been binge-reading the FT over the past couple of days to catch up after being out of the loop for ten days or so. I’ve noticed for the first time a very sharp difference between news coverage inside the US and outside. This is what I see:

–in the US, we concentrate on the revenge tour nature of the administration and the selection of high-level officials based on their physical appearance and (I surmise) their not outshining the president either cognitively or in life experience/common sense. We worry about the move away from renewables back to fossil fuels, the deployment of federal troops domestically, the human and economic cost of ICE deportations…

–in the FT, the biggest issue seems to be that there’s no clear, consistent policy direction from Washington. Instead, and if we exclude deporting workers of Hispanic heritage and a strong anti-renewable energy bias, Washington policy can, and does, change into something else overnight.

The view seems to me to be that having seen Brexit on their own continent, one of the bigger economic trainwrecks of the last half-century (and the model the rest of the world may be using to view the US today), nothing really fazes Europe. The main issue is how to adapt. Sort of like Archimedes’ plea for a stable point and a lever.

There are limits to the usefulness of any given point of view. But the FT stance–it is what it is and we have to adapt–is the one I think US financial markets are taking. In the Brexit case, it sharply intensified the decline of the UK into economic irrelevance–as it lost its role as the legal arbiter of EU affairs and headquarters for foreign companies seeking EU customers.

The potential decline of the US is unlikely to be so swift or so steep. As a result, for now I think the world’s reaction to the Trump administration will continue to be to bet on continuing currency weakness and therefore on companies with foreign sales and $US costs.