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"T"heatrics: Trade, Tech, Tesla and Trump!

What a week of theatrics by all the Ts mentioned. Let's look at each one of these!
Trade:  Trade and tariffs continue to dominate the news with skirmishes between US and Canada, potential battle with Japan and escalating trade war with China. On the strength of US economy, US seems to have upper hand which Trump and his trade representative wants to fully exploit and extract most from its trade partners. Mexico fell in line so will most likely Canada resulting into NAFTA 2.0 by end of year. EU has started taking about "no tariffs or reciprocal tariffs" on cars. Japanese are smart not to ruffle feathers with Trump administration. And then there is China! The trade talks started two weeks back but did not made any progress. Most likely tariffs on another $200B Chinese goods  will happen and then serious negotiations will start resulting into some kind of deal by end of year. Till then trade will continue to dominate the economic news
Tech: After reaching all time high in late Aug, Tech stocks are having bad start to month of Sept. Many stocks are down by 5-20%. Lots of factors at play here. The testimony of Facebook's Sheryl's Sandberg, Twitter's Jack Dorsey and Google's "empty chair" in front of senate committee was nothing short of theatrics.  Trump administration and Dept of Justice looking into practices of these companies to specific voices could become serious especially if they are not careful during upcoming mid-term elections. Semis are taking hit due to fear of reaching peak. One of my recommended stock Micron (MU $45) is down over 20% in last couple of weeks. So are many other stocks like TWTR, ZUO, FB and NFLX. All of these stocks offer significant buying opportunity if one can stomach the volatility since they can go down another 10-20% before going up by 20-40%. So invest carefully.
Tesla: The theatrics @Tesla are mostly due to Elon Musk. How many negative news can a company take in a week? Two executives leaving, short seller suing company and CEO for spreading false but material information,  CEO Elon Musk smoking pot during live podcast and stock deeply into bear territory. Elon Musk is extremely talented and visionary person of our generation almost to the same level as Steve Jobs. However Elon Musk needs to watch out on how his personal behavior is impacting Tesla shareholders. If board, CEO and company do not get its act right quickly and address upcoming cash-flow problems, there is real fear that Tesla may go thru "near death" experience as Apple did back in 90's.
Trump: Theatrics was how Trump won the presidency and that's how he has been running it for last 20 months. To add to the drama, we have Bob Woodward's book "Fear" coming out on 9/11, anonymous NY Times opinion wrote by Trump administration insider on how he/she is opposing Trump's policies from inside and Muller tightening his noose around Trump's men with various indictments and closing in on Trump and his family. All of these happening 2 months before very crucial mid-term elections which could add further drama to Washington theatrics.
/Shyam

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