There wasn’t much to report this afternoon, with the Trump and Spain-inspired losses continuing relatively unabated.
Though yet to match the size of the declines in Europe, the Dow Jones still fell 50 points after the bell, dragging the index below 21700 for the first time in 3 and a half weeks. The chaos of the Trump regime finally seems to be weighing on the Dow and its S&P 500 and NASDAQ peers after months of the dollar suffering on its own. The President isn’t just alienating the already hostile Democrats, but swathes of his own party, with more and more Republicans disturbed by his reaction to the white nationalist protests in Charlottesville last weekend.
In terms of market-specifics, the fallout from Trump’s Charlottesville comments has included the dissolving of the Strategic and Policy Forum and the White House Manufacturing Jobs initiative, the disbandment of the advisory council on infrastructure and may yet lead to the resignation of National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn, something the White House was forced to deny on Thursday evening. All of this further imperils the so far elusive infrastructure and tax reforms that helped send the US indices to all-time highs, causing investors to question their current valuations.
As for Europe, the FTSE and CAC remained heavily in the red, the UK and French indices falling 1.1% and 0.9% respectively. The DAX, on the other hand, managed to roughly halve its Friday losses, and is now down a comparatively healthy 0.4%.