The week ahead

Today is the 97th day of the year. We’re 23% through April (already?), and just 8% through Q2. The PSEi has been fading over the past week, approaching the psychological “floor”, but all things considered, we’ve been doing better than the global markets. Japan, China, and the US have all sold off significantly in the wake of Trump’s disastrous Global Trade War Kick-Off event (“Liberation Day”), and the responses that have echoed back like China’s escalation of tariffs against US goods. Sentiment in the US is that the markets are preparing for another huge sell-off on (their) Monday unless Trump flip-flops on the tariff deadline or makes some other material change to the threat.

> PH:  Our week starts with a bang on Tuesday with the Top Line [TOP] IPO. The Lim Family’s fuel retailer is hitting the market at a rather incredible time, so it will be fascinating to see how the market consumes this listing. Then, after the IPO, we get a non-trading day right in the middle of the trading week, followed on Thursday by the BSP’s interest rate decision. It’s a big/weird week!

> International:  Your guess is as good as mine. Technically, the tariffs that Trump announced get implemented tonight, but considering the muted response (only Vietnam, Taiwan, and a few others have negotiated openly), it wouldn’t surprise me to see Trump delay the implementation to save face and give his team more time to conduct meaningful talks with more delegations. 

  MB BOTTOM-LINE:  I actually start every week now trying to anticipate how the PSE investing market will consume whatever news might have impacted the American market on Saturday, and whatever might have happened over the weekend. Things are happening too fast for me to effectively track the potential impact of each material change, let alone sit and think about the downstream interaction between two, three, or ten concurrent material changes. It’s like having a room full of people squeeze out a fart, and then asking me to guess what they each had for dinner based on the resulting bouquet. All I know is that it smells bad, and I should probably get a new hobby. Oh, and inflation. Everything is going to get more expensive. So, the answer is: it smells like poo and inflation.

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