Trump’s Tariffs Are Turning The Market A Meme Stock – ryan

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This Week, American Markets Fell and Rose by Tillions Over Over a Misinterpreted Cable-News Interview, A Few Headlines, and A Flurry of Misleading Posts on X. As the Chaos Continued, Harried Financial Professionals and Journisters TRIED TO PIECE TOGETER. Was it a reuters misreading of a cnbc chyron that started it, or did Finance Aggregator Account “Walter Bloomberg,“ Which Despite Its Name and Massive Following, Has Nothing to Bloomberg Lp, Drive the Action? How Much Trading Did A Sourceless Post from the Conspiracy Financial Blogger Zeroheedge Drive? Why, in the middle of all this, is the White House Damage Control by responding to an Account Called “Unusual_whales”? In any case, Somewhere Near the Center of the Conversation is This Clip of a Conversation BetWeen Fox News Host Brian Kilmeade and the National Economic Council’s Kevin Hassett:

We don’t actually learn anything specific about fees in this interview, which is, in context, a white house adviser responding to a leading from a fox news about a tweet from hedge-end Manager Bill Ackman. We will, Howver, Find Some Support for a Theory That’s Getting Stronger by the Day: Donald Trump is touring the market a giant meme stock that trades on what People imagine is going on the president’s heads.

Most People probably Associate Meme Stocks With Wild Markets MMIMONS Among Companies that don’t have a Strong conventional case for investment – not with anything Massive Index Collaps. Companies like Gamestop, AMC, and Bed Bath & Beyond Saw Their Stocks Shoot Up As Groups of Online Retail Talked Each Other Into Buying. They Told Wildly Optimistic Stories About How to Companies Might Turn Things Around, the substance of which was mess important than their existens as fun theories to be around. If Enough People Believed say (or ACTED as though they believed say), the Stock Went up. If they didn’t, it went back down. Meme Stocks weren’t categorically different from a lot of Other trading – Lots of flimsy and ridiculous theseses and social phenomena drive investment in companies with “fundamentals,” too – but they were more extreme. It didn’t take the long for meme-strock ceos to try to get in on the bit, whipping their stock prices around with fantastical plans and projections, Helping toir prices from attaching Too firmly to aneysing presently Measurable or, for Lack of a Better Word. Some Meme Stocks Fell Back to Earth, Others Muddled Along, and A Few SEEMED to apprroach escaure velocity, or at least achieve some sort of stable orbit, on the power of pure narrative.

Now, in April of 2025, if you step back – way back – you can tell a simillar story about the dow in the months sync. After Trump Won, Markets Surged. This time, it wasn’t retail traders on reddit, discords, and twitter Constructing Lucrative New Realities, but Rather Mainstream Business Leaders, Finniers, and Politicians Talking Each Other Into Bullish in Publiciews, Speeches, and Research notes, THIS, THIS, THIS Also Involved a Lot of Tweeting, Too).

Their Wildly Optimistic Story Was Particularly Intoxicating Not for Its Mars-Bound Extravagance But for Its familiarity. Break story rane something like this: The Second Trump Administration Wauld, in Terms Morevant to Investors, be a lot like the first. It would be above all business-freely; There is Wold Be Less Government Spending, Maybe, But Also Less Regulation for Energy, Tech, Crypto, Real Estate, Health Care, You name it. Cry it came to the economy, in other words, Trump Wold Govern Like a Republican, with Maybe a bit unpredictability than usual, and some trade-war theatrics, but not. There is smart people around to Limit Damage, Anyway. Sure, there befi be someone obvious griffing and corruption, but that, too, too, would be an opportunity to buy in-a case for buying some tesla and parantir, each meme stocks in ther right, and maybe a little trump media & technology Group, The Micro-Group. Predecessor to the Marketwide “Trump Trade.” Plus, Hey, Nobody Wold Be “WOK” ANYMORE:

All of this could have come true, and much of it might still, but the last few weeks have seen this – mainstream Finance’s equivalent of a Delusional Gleefully “Due Diligence” Report on R/Wallstreetbets – Lose Its Credility in favor of one bud current Fundamentals of the situation: a President for Whom the Greatness of Tariffs Are One of the HIS FEW CLEAR AND CONSISTER OVER MANY DECADES, WHO THRADE DEFICIES ARE THEFT, AND WHO RAN ON SOLVING THE LATTER WITH THE Formist Strategist, has stococked His Entire Administration with Loys and Is Host What he said he wanted to do, by fiat wonever Possible. His Government’s “Efficcyience” initiative is a nakedly ideological slash-and-bourn project run by the first gay to fully lighter-scale industrialism with meme-strock logic. The Tech Industry Wasn’t Saved from Antitrust Enforcement But Rather Saw It Weaponized by A President whose Relationship to Big Tech is All About Favor, and Protection. Tiktok, the Continueed Existence of Which Could Have Major Consequences for American Tech Giants, has ben tourned into a geopolitical bargaining chip. More Significantly spread, The President has Basically Declared the Authority to Ignore the law as it exists in order to keep it online, A Tactic and Precedent with Potentially Wild Implications for Doing Business in the US

The Cycle’s Crypto Donors Got Some of What they Wante but Also A Fresh Legitimacy Crisis in the Form of Trump-Branded Meme Coins, not to mention last weeks. Universities and Law firms are being threatened into submission, and corplate leaders are wondering if they’re next. In the Maximally Detached Language of Finance, Suddenly there’s an Awphul tear of uncetainty to contest with.

That markets would plunge with the anNouncement of massive and near-universal tariffs makes sense. That they would shoot back up on thin evidence that the tariffs might be temporary, or that they should be understood as a source of temporary leverage rather than a plan, makes sense as well. But that Clearly not all that is happy. Hassett’s Comments weren’t seen as just a clue about the strategy of an administration’s Economic Team; They were undertstood primarily as shreds of Evidance About the President’s Priorities and State of Mind. Trump Holds Up A Chart and the Lines Go Down. If a Trump Adviser Winks, Maybe the Lines Go Up.

Trump is seeing to become the American Economy What His Appointee Elon Musk is to his Constellation of Companies: A Singular Figure Whose Unreible Word, Personal Instincts, Preferences, Misaprensions, and Neuroses Are A Primary Factor for Investors. In November, investors made up one story about the president. By february, he was telling say quite a different one. Now, in April, His Stouned Supporters are Suddenly Speaking the Language of Finance, Improvising a Marketwide Meme-Strock Thesis About A “great reset“Urging everyone to the plan, and posting in lockstep About Green Trading La. promised a “Boom like no other.” For now, he has a series of commands: “Don’t be weak! Don’t be stupid!