Say what you want about Trump, but he has certainly created good opportunities for us dividend investors. Then he also has the most tender toes I have ever seen. All it takes is a very small step on those toes and it is time for the anger to fall on the guilty party again. As usual, the US President is no small show.

To somewhat summarize what happened:

On Thursday, China announced increased controls on the export of rare earth metals and so-called critical metals, i.e. raw materials that primarily drive the technology sector. How to define “increased controls” is not something I have delved into further.

Friday. Trump threatened even before the stock market closed to raise tariffs on Chinese goods but at the time we had no details. That news caused the Nasdaq to fall before closing and for example Nvidia was down5%.

When the stock market closed, we got more information about what thoughts were going through Trump’s head. He then made the following post on Truth Social.

“Starting November 1, 2025 (or earlier, depending on how China acts), the United States will impose a 100 percent tariff on China, which will apply in addition to the tariffs they already pay.”

So we got first a threat and then more facts. The threat alone caused the Nasdaq stock exchange to fall 3.6%. This is the biggest decline since Trump issued his first tariff threats in April. The Stockholm Stock Exchange also managed to fall a little before closing, but only about 1%.

The general idea has been that the situation will worsen on Monday if no further news emerges over the weekend. No such agreements have been made, to my knowledge.

All other things being equal, we could expect red numbers.

The US stock market has been doing terribly well since April and now that there is turbulence, I guess everyone wants to get out at the same time. There is a thought to realize a profit in this situation.

Here in Sweden it will also be chaotic as the Swedish stock market largely follows the American one. It will probably be mainly cyclical companies that will be affected the most.

Then the Swedish stock market has not performed as strongly as the one in the US, so one can well reason that the fall will be a little lower.

We can only speculate on how the stock market will react in the coming week/weeks. If we look at how Trump has done historically, he has been able to back down from these crazy tariff numbers in the past to something more reasonable.

I’ll keep an eye on the stock market this week and make transactions where it hurts the most.