Big-name Wall Street investors are expressing extreme optimism about President-elect Donald Trump's second term, but some observers are warning them that they're potentially experiencing irrational exuberance.
Julia Coronado, founder of the research firm MacroPolicy Perspectives, told the New York Times that many Wall Street players have convinced themselves that Trump will only carry out the policies they support and not those they oppose, such as hefty foreign tariffs or mass deportations.
"A lot of people are using deductive reasoning and concluding that he’ll only do things that are good for the market... They can ride this wave of hope-ium through the end of January," said Coronado, who added that Wall Street's current view of Trump "feels delusional."
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Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, similarly told the Times that Wall Street fat cats were fooling themselves if they really believed that Trump is only using the threat of tariffs as negotiating chips instead of ends unto themselves.
"There’s no question he means it,” Alden said of Trump's deep belief in tariffs. "The first thing he said in his acceptance speech is: I will keep my promises. And that’s very much at the top of the promise list."
The Times also wrote that Wall Street bigwigs might be wrong to believe that Trump won't try to end the independence of the Federal Reserve in his second term.
"He waged a nonstop verbal pressure campaign on the Fed during his first term and tried to appoint loyalists to its seven-member board in Washington — a playbook that he could return to," wrote the paper. "The uncertainty over which policy promises Mr. Trump will fulfill is also creating an uncertain backdrop for the Fed’s own policy."
