I made three small buys today At about 1.6% of total portfolio. Two at Vanguard & one at Schwab. No waiting in line, so maybe things are slowing down a bit. Sold some funds over the last few months & trying to get back to 30 or 35 % in equities.
Hopefully the dippers take note, Ha Ha!

@linter- Yes sir, the 2001 one with Timothy Hutton. If you are interested in a purchase, it's the excellent 2001 one with Timothy Hutton available at Amazon , for about $53.
If you need to see the subtitles, that can be a bit tricky: the DVD player must provide the old 3- connector output: video on the yellow, audio on the red and white. The now-standard HDMI video output will not provide the subtitles. The picture quality is excellent, and the stories very accurate to the print versions.

Do you REALLY think a large % of his minions would still "believe" he's a financial whiz if the US went belly up?
His minions will believe this is all somehow Biden's fault, because that's the excuse the propaganda (aka Fox News) will direct them towards. Roughly 35% - 40% of the country will vote for him again no matter what. NO MATTER WHAT.
Maybe if you take their Social Security away, the base erodes a bit more.
There is no common sense involved, no humility and the facts are alternative. It's the foundation for this entire "movement".
It's a cult of personality. And it's how we got here.

And for anybody who wants to better understand the fallacy of the materially incorrect tariff numbers in BOTH columns of the buffoon's tariff's plaque (that I've been posting about on various threads), try to locate CNBC's interview (at about 1:50 EDT today) with AEI's Derek Scissors. I will post it here if/when I locate it.

I researched the results of President Nixon's meddling with the Federal Reserve
in light of President Trump's recent comments urging Jerome Powell to:
"CUT INTEREST RATES, JEROME, AND STOP PLAYING POLITICS!”
Some here may be interested in the findings.
Richard Nixon demanded and Arthur Burns supplied an expansionary mon-
etary policy and a growing economy in the run-up to the 1972 election. (page 178)
Thus, a monetary stimulus helped to boost the economy in time for the 1972
election, helping to deliver Nixon’s landslide victory. However, the excessive ag-
gregate demand stimulation prior to the election created serious problems for the
economy that took nearly a decade to resolve. (page 179)
Regardless of the ultimate source of Arthur Burns’s motivation, his actions as
Federal Reserve chair helped to trigger an extremely costly inflationary boom– bust
cycle. By Election Day in 1972, the Fed had already started its monetary tightening.
The federal funds rate had risen from 4.49 percent in July 1972 to 5.06 percent by
Election Day. As Nixon had told Burns in February 1972, “I really don’t care what
you do in [or after] April.” One year after the election, in November 1973, the
Federal Reserve had hit the monetary policy brakes in earnest. In the year since the
November 1972 election, the discount rate had been increased from 4.5 percent in
July 1972 to 7.5 percent. The federal funds rate, which had been 4.49 percent in
July 1972, jumped to 9.71 percent. But the civilian unemployment rate, as usual a
lagging indicator, continued to plummet, falling to 4.8 percent in November 1973.
The Nixon–Burns boom– bust cycle was underway. (page 187)
The eventual elimination of wage and price controls in 1973 and the exces-
sively aggressive monetary policy of 1971–72 produced an inflationary boom. The
inflation rate measured by the change in the Consumer Price Index for 1973 was
9.6 percent (as shown in Table 3). In response to the post-election Federal Reserve
tightening, the economy swung into a recession in November 1973, one year after
the election. The recession lasted until March 1975, but even this recession was
insufficient to stop inflationary pressures. The inflation rate for 1975 was
6.7 percent— higher than the rate that precipitated the earlier wage and price
controls. It was not until Paul Volcker became chairman of the Federal Reserve in
1979 and the 1980 – 82 recessions occurred that inflation was finally brought under
control. During those recessions, the federal funds rate hit a record 15.61 percent
(weekly average) and the unemployment rate rose to over 10 percent for ten
months. Inflation was finally defeated, but at huge economic cost. (page 187)
https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdf/10.1257/jep.20.4.177

I posted this elsewhere, but thought we might want to be able to locate this data w/o searching.
So, for today and likely future reference...
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/06/sp-500-circuit-breaker-on-tariff-worries-what-that-means.html
Excerpt:
There are three circuit breaker levels:
Level 1: The S&P 500 falls 7% intraday. If this occurs before 3:25 p.m. ET, trading is halted for 15 minutes. If it happens after that time, trading continues unless a level 3 breaker is tripped up.
Level 2: The S&P 500 drops 13% intraday. If this occurs before 3:25 p.m. ET, trading stops for 15 minutes. If it happens after that time, trading continues unless a level 3 breaker is triggered.
Level 3: The S&P 500 plunges 20% intraday. At this point, the Exchange suspends trading for the remainder of the day.
The benchmark closed Friday’s session at 5,074.08. Here are the thresholds the S&P 500 needs to reach during Monday’s session the different circuit breakers to be triggered:
Level 1: 4,718.89
Level 2: 4,414.45
Level 3: 4,059.26

And he's now threatening China with 50% additional tariffs if they don't drop the 34%.
Well, at least he has a lot of personal experience with bankruptcies.

He runs the country the way he runs his business. Only problem is, bankruptcy doesn't go well for countries...

And he's now threatening China with 50% additional tariffs if they don't drop the 34%.
Well, at least he has a lot of personal experience with bankruptcies.

I just saw a good interview on MSNBC -- The global investor said " the world is moving on and looking at how to do it without the US" This is going to cause long term problems for the US. FAFO at its finest.

As the Orange one said about Canadian wood, oil, electricity, etc... "We don't need them..."
This will not end well for us.

@Charles, lots of quick changes in bonds. Junk bonds that worked in last two years now are falling behind as the market is falling, while the safer and quality IG bonds are back this week. Quite a reversal. Yes, I like boring T bills, money market, and stable value as cash and cash equivalents. Now is not the time to catch a falling knife.
Right now the FED is in a tight spot when the inflation remains elevated and getting worse. Watch for the labor market where recession starts.
Is it economically feasible to reshoring manufacturing base to the States? Interesting but naive thinking in my honest opinion.
@JD_co, the tariffs is more revealing that meets the eyes. Excerpt from WSJ article.

But the tariff scheme he announced isn’t reciprocal and isn’t based on measuring foreign trade barriers. Instead, it simply measures bilateral trade deficits and comes up with tariff numbers from there. 
Those are two very different things, and could be one reason why global financial markets are reacting so badly.
The upshot is that, in the majority of cases, the Trump administration is now charging other countries more than what they charge the U.S.
Take the case of Vietnam. The U.S. will now charge Vietnam a 46% tariff for its exports to the U.S. But Vietnam’s simple average tariff is 9.4%, and its weighted average tariff—which is adjusted to account for the share of products coming in under different tariff rates—is just 5.1%, according to data from the World Trade Organization.

For Apple News subscribers, here is the link.
https://apple.news/AP0d-np1rQOSoanLTvSkaVQ

Press Sec just said the 90-day pause is, well, FAKE NEWS!
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/07/trump-tariffs-live-updates-stock-market-crypto.html
Should we believe them?
Well the market does! NASDAQ was UP ~4%, now back DOWN ~2%.
You can't make this stuff up - the RED PARTY openly referred to THEIR OWN news as
FAKE NEWS!

Here is a X post from a Shay Boloor, a financial/investment podcaster, that is making the rounds:
MY OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT TRUMP The frustrating part is that I was on board for a reset. Truly. I’ve said it publicly. I’ve written about it in this very feed. I understood the need for a detox. For decades, the U.S. economy played the part of the rich guy at the table -- picking up the check for a global order that no longer worked in our favor. We hollowed out our industrial base. We enabled unfair trade imbalances under the illusion of diplomacy. We subsidized demand for cheap imports while outsourcing the hard questions about how our domestic workforce would adapt.
Eventually, that had to stop. It was unsustainable -- financially, politically, and morally. We couldn’t keep pretending that a consumption-led economy held together by zero-interest rates and global fragility was a long-term solution. I wanted a rebalancing. I welcomed the idea of a harder, smarter America-first policy that pushed for fair treatment, reciprocal agreements, and a real industrial strategy rooted in technological superiority, national security, and capital formation. That would’ve been leadership.
But that’s not what this is.
That you’ve rolled out isn’t detox -- it’s whiplash. This isn’t strategic decoupling. It’s scattershot retaliation dressed up as reform. There’s no roadmap. No operational playbook. No clear articulation of where this ends or what the metrics of success even are. It’s not an attempt to responsibly unwind America’s role as the global shock absorber -- it’s a brute-force attempt to disorder the existing system with no viable alternative in place.
You can’t replace a fragile supply chain with chaos and call it resilience. You can’t build American industry by torching the scaffolding that underpins capital flows, labor mobility, and global coordination -- especially when the U.S. itself no longer has the domestic capacity to meet its own industrial needs. You talk about bringing jobs home, but the U.S. doesn’t have the labor force, permitting structure, or wage flexibility to stand up full-scale manufacturing at speed. And now -- after years of deportation policies and underinvestment in vocational training -- you’ve made the labor gap even wider.
Capital isn’t going to rush to fill that void just because you raised tariffs. It’s going to wait. It’s going to sit on the sidelines and preserve optionality. Because right now, no CEO can confidently model a five-year capex plan. No board can greenlight supply chain onshoring when they don’t know whether a tariff rate will double next quarter based on your Twitter account or some arbitrary trade deficit formula.
That’s the issue. This wasn’t rolled out as part of a comprehensive American renewal strategy. It wasn’t coordinated with the Fed. It wasn’t communicated clearly to Treasury. It wasn’t backed by a labor reskilling program or any form of public-private manufacturing incentive beyond empty slogans. It was dropped like a bomb -- seemingly designed more to shock than to build.
And in the absence of credible structure, capital is retreating -- not realigning.
I was ready to endure the pain of a thoughtful, structured reset. Most long-term investors were. We’ve lived through tightening cycles. We understood that globalization, as it stood, had reached a breaking point. But this isn’t a correction of imbalances. This is a rupture without scaffolding.
What you’ve created isn’t reindustrialization. It’s an intentional sabotage of capital planning. No executive is going to build a factory with four-year political horizon risk, a floating tariff regime, and no labor certainty. No investor is going to fund expansion in a market where the basic cost of imports can change weekly based on what country has a current account surplus that week. The system you’ve launched isn’t designed for certainty. It’s designed for control.
And the irony is -- we’re not even punishing bad actors. We’re punishing everyone. Allies. Poor countries. Longstanding partners. Israel gets slapped with 17% tariffs while dismantling their own to support American imports. Vietnam gets hit with 46% because it’s become too productive. Lesotho, one of the poorest countries on Earth, faces a 50% tariff because it doesn’t buy enough U.S. goods -- as if that were a sign of unfairness rather than poverty. It’s incoherent. It’s cruel. And it undermines any claim to moral high ground.
You say this is about protecting American workers. But no worker is helped by policy so erratic that no employer wants to hire. No consumer is helped when import costs rise and domestic capacity doesn’t exist to replace them. No investor is helped when the cost of capital spikes in the face of weaponized uncertainty.
This is not a plan to make America stronger. It’s a gamble that markets and allies will blink first. It’s brinkmanship with no floor.
And the most maddening part? There was a path. A real one. A version of this policy that could’ve worked -- not in headlines or soundbites, but in practice. A path that applied pressure with purpose, that aligned economic force with long-term national interest, that sent a clear message to adversaries and partners alike without destabilizing global commerce or blindsiding capital allocators.
You could’ve gone after China -- hard -- and had the backing of nearly every serious investor and strategist on the Street. Not just because of trade deficits or currency suppression, but because China has been actively undermining our economy and our people. I would’ve supported a four-year plan to end all dependence on Chinese manufacturing unless they stopped stealing American IP (DeepSeek). No more games. Make it explicit: if they don’t comply, we’ll back Taiwanese independence and bring the entire global semiconductor economy with us. No ambiguity. No half-threats. As I see it, China is at war with us -- and our policy should reflect that.
With the EU, you could’ve played it clean. Match auto tariffs percent-for-percent. That’s fair. And then leave the rest alone -- especially goods and services. We run a huge surplus on services with the EU. It props up some of our biggest competitive advantages -- enterprise software, consulting, cloud, defense tech, streaming, media IP. Tariffing the EU outside of autos would be like shooting your own foot for balance. We’re not in a trade war with Europe. We're in a competition for global enterprise dominance -- and right now, the U.S. is winning.
That’s what real strength would’ve looked like. That’s what an America-first trade doctrine could’ve achieved. You’d be rebuilding the system from the inside out -- not just throwing bricks through the windows and calling it a redesign.
Investors would’ve backed it. CEOs would’ve planned around it. Global partners would’ve respected it -- even if they didn’t like it. And capital would’ve flowed toward American resilience instead of retreating from American unpredictability.
But instead of that, you went with chaos. And now, confidence is shattered. Not because the numbers are bad -- but because no one knows what the numbers mean anymore.
That’s the cost of burning down the rules without building new ones. So no, this is not the detox we needed. It’s not strategic decoupling. It’s not a path to renewal. It’s a slow, loud dismantling of the very foundation that has allowed American capital, innovation, and enterprise to dominate for decades. And it didn’t have to be this way.
But now we’re here. And the market is reacting accordingly -- not to the fundamentals, but to the sense that the future may no longer be modelable. That’s not a trade. That’s an exit.
I don’t want this post to be hyper-political. This isn’t about red or blue. It’s not about the 2024 election cycle. It’s not about ideology. It’s about strategy. It’s about execution.
It’s about understanding that when you're the United States -- when you sit at the helm of the global economic engine -- every policy you roll out reverberates through capital markets, supply chains, boardrooms, and governments. Words become signals. Signals become pricing. Pricing becomes pain -- or progress.
And I hope -- for the sake of the markets, for the sake of businesses trying to plan, and for the future we’re all investing into -- that it’s not too late to recalibrate. Because we don’t need more noise.
We need a plan.

CME SP500 futures while you slept - and about an hour from the NYSE open. Not as bad as they were but NYSE trading has yet to begin.
https://i.ibb.co/jP94LWFd/CME-SPX-AM-040725.png

Following is a short current report in The Guardian:
Britain’s stock market has plunged deep into the red at the start of trading.

Stocks are sliding sharply again, adding to last week’s heavy losses, as investors grow more fearful that Donald Trump’s trade policies will lead to recession.
In London, the FTSE 100 index of blue-chip stocks has plunged by 488 points, or 6%, taking the index down to 7566 points, its lowest level since February 2024.
That’s an even more severe plunge than the near-5% wipeout on Friday after China retaliated against the US with its own new tariffs.
Every share on the FTSE 100 is in the red, with UK manufacturing firm Rolls-Royce tumbling by 13%.
Miners, banks, and investment firms are also in the top fallers.
There is widespread disappointment this morning that there was no progress on US trade tariffs over the weekend, with Trump described his new tariffs as necessary ‘medicine’.
Kathleen Brooks, research director at XTB, says investors are desperate to see ‘concrete action’, such as a pause or u-turn on Trump’s tariffs.
This market is looking for concrete action, not talk of action. The best panacea for financial markets right now would be a pause or reversal from the US on its tariff programme.

Following are excerpts from the latest newsletter from Heather Cox Richardson.

After President Donald Trump’s tariff announcements on April 2 wiped $5 trillion dollars from the stock market, the Republican Party is scrambling.
Farmers, who were a part of Trump’s base, are “struck and shocked” by the tariffs, the president of the South Dakota Farmers Union told Lauren Scott of CBC News, saying they will have a “devastating effect.” Rob Copeland, Lauren Hirsch, and Maureen Farrell of the New York Times report that Wall Street leaders who backed Trump are now criticizing him publicly, with one calling for someone to stop him. The size of yesterday’s peaceful protests around the country, less than 100 days into Trump’s term when he should be enjoying a honeymoon, demonstrated growing fury at the administration’s actions.
Yesterday, in the midst of the economic crisis and as millions of protesters gathered across the country, the White House announced that “[t]he President won his second round matchup of the Senior Club Championship today in Jupiter, FL, and advances to the Championship Round tomorrow.” This afternoon, President Donald J. Trump posted a video of himself hitting a golf ball off a tee, perhaps as a demonstration that he is unconcerned about the chaos in the markets.
When Trump administration officials Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett appeared on this morning’s Sunday shows, their attempts to reassure Americans and deflect concerns also sounded out of touch.
Bessent, a billionaire, told Kristen Welker of NBC’s Meet the Press that the administration is creating a new, more secure economic system and that Americans “who have put away for years in their savings accounts, I think don’t look at the day-to-day fluctuations of what’s happening.” He went on to suggest that the losses were likely not that significant and would turn out fine in the long term.
Lutnick insisted that the tariffs are about national security and bringing back manufacturing, although the administration has frozen the Inflation Reduction Act funding for the manufacturing President Joe Biden brought to the U.S., overwhelmingly in Republican-dominated districts. Lutnick kept hitting on the MAGA talking point that other countries are ripping the U.S. off, and insisted that the tariffs are here to stay.
On This Week by ABC News, Hassett took the opposite position: that countries are already calling the White House to begin tariff negotiations. Host George Stephanopoulos asked Hassett about the video Trump posted on his social media account claiming that he was crashing the market on purpose, forcing him to say that crashing the economy was not part of Trump’s strategy. Hassett claimed that the tariffs will not cost consumers more and that Trump is “trying to deliver for American workers.”
The tariffs not only have forced administration officials into contradictory positions, but also have brought into the open the rift between old MAGA and billionaire Elon Musk.
Trump’s tariff policy reflects the ideas of his senior counselor on manufacturing and trade, Peter Navarro, a China hawk who invented an “expert” to support his statements in his own books. Musk, who opposes the tariffs, has taken shots at Navarro on his social media platform X. On Saturday, Musk directly contradicted Trump and MAGA when he told a gathering of right-wing Italians that he wants the U.S. and Europe to create a tariff-free zone as well as "more freedom of people to move between Europe and North America." On the Fox News Channel this morning, Navarro retorted that Musk “sells cars” and is just trying to protect his own interests.

Comment: The nest has been kicked and the ants are scurrying hither and yon...

Sounds like a good read- some excerpts from Charles' link:
• This book was designed to reduce mistakes.
• Your mistakes with money.
• Tiny errors, epic fails and everything in between.
• You can do thousands of things right, but make just a few of the errors we discuss, and you destroy much of your portfolio.
• If you could learn how to avoid the unforced errors investors make all the time, you would make your life so much richer and less stressful.
• The counterintuitive truth is avoiding errors is much more important than scoring wins.
• We all make mistakes¹. The goal with this book is to help you make fewer of them, and to have the mistakes you do make be less expensive.
Note¹: Well, all of us but one, anyway. But no need to mention any names here.

New book by Ritholtz: How Not To Invest.