The legendary American standup Shecky Greene had a great Frank Sinatra gag: “Frank Sinatra saved my life. Five guys were beating me up, and I heard Frank say ‘That’s enough’.”
Donald Trump is no Frank Sinatra. But the gag captures the reality of someone capable of enormous damage who can pretend an absence of active malice is beneficent. The issue of course is once savaged, trust is not so easily salvaged.
Whether it is mistrust of the US as a trading partner or the safe haven value of US debt, Trump has introduced a deep element of anxiety into risk markets that 'risk off' only barely starts to capture. The weekend’s latest farce around tariff exemptions for consumer electronics and maybe/maybe not semiconductors was, in Trump’s world, hardly a shock.
Among those suffering the impact are higher risk, higher return, disruptive sectors such as fintechs. The headline fallout includes the deferral of what would have been tentpole IPOs like Klarna and eToro.
