The Trump slump (and what to do about it)
🔸 Plus: “Help, I’m marrying my co-worker and no one at work knows!” 🔸 Ex Barclays CEO's emails with Jeffrey Epstein 🔸 Why tariffs on imports are a tax on exports 🔸
Your 2-minute guide to demystifying money and making you richer
The markets, year-to-date
S&P 500: 5,770.20 ⬇️ 1.89%
FTSE 100: 8,679.88 ⬆️ 5.08%
Bitcoin: $86,070.69 ⬇️ 7.91%
GBP to USD: $1.2911 ⬆️ 3.14%
GBP to EUR: €1.1922 ⬆️ 1.41%
(As of Friday market close.)
Take your lumps as stocks slump because of Trump
Donald Trump’s effect on the stock market has been a terrifying rollercoaster so far. In late February, the S&P 500 hit a record high. The index then lost all its gains since Trump was elected. The Nasdaq Composite (tech stocks) is down 10% from its high — that’s officially in “correction” territory. The Magnificent 7 stocks that drove so many of those gains (Microsoft, Apple, Alphabet, Nvidia, Meta, Amazon, and Tesla) are down 12%.
It’s a scary time.
The reader who messaged us a couple of weeks ago to ask whether she should wait to start investing because she was “truly worried about the Trump effect on markets” has been proven right. The Trump effect has been horrible for American stocks.
Here is the most important thing to know:
Don’t panic
There is a very good financial reason why panicking will hurt you, and you can see it in the following chart. It shows the difference between three different types of investors:
Those who buy and hold stocks over time,
Those who only buy after a decline (i.e. “buying the dip”),
Those who only buy when stocks are on the way up (i.e. chasing momentum).
You do not need to be a financial genius to see that buying, holding, and gritting your teeth through thick and thin is the best way to gain wealth:
Notably, people who only invest after stocks go up do worst of all
And, counterintuitively, the people “buying the dip” do worse than the buy & hold crowd.
At Moneyin2 we encourage you to save and invest over the long run because that way you will benefit from pound cost averaging, compounding, and the passive investing gains that almost always beat the investment professionals who are trading to beat the market.
Yes, Trump has been a disaster for people holding stocks. But this is a good time to remind ourselves that markets go up, and markets go down, and we all knew this right from the start. So hold tight, stick to your plan, and maybe stay away from Twitter for a bit.
The Moneyin2 Guide to Wealth
The Moneyin2 Guide to Wealth will get you the biggest return on your savings by maximising cash matches from your employer, free cash from the government, and shielding your investment gains from tax. It takes you step-by-step through the world of pensions, SIPPs, ISAs and ETFs — all in plain English.
And for dessert …
13 new skyscrapers are planned for London. See the mockup photos and maps here.
Ex Barclays CEO Jes Staley sent or received 1,200 emails with Jeffrey Epstein. Yikes.
Sam Bankman-Fried, the man who crashed the FTX crypto exchange and is now serving 25 years in prison, has a plan to persuade Trump to pardon him.
“Help, I’m marrying my co-worker and no one at work knows!” Advice on how to announce you’re engaged to a colleague at work when you’ve been keeping it a secret.
Tariffs on imports also function like a tax on exports because exporters often need to import stuff to make the stuff they are exporting.
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