Wall Street Stumbles, Bitcoin Parties at $103K as Trade Drama Gets Spicy 🍿

by

The week crawled to its exhausted end as America’s financiers shuffled their papers, eyes reddened by rumors drifting from across the gray, indifferent Atlantic. In the smoky, clattering heart of finance—the stock market—the Dow staggered down by 119 points. The Nasdaq, that ever-hopeful beacon of lost dreams and silicon ambitions, managed to inch heavenward by the grand sum of 0.0043%, proving yet again that even a wounded bird sometimes pretends to be an eagle. The S&P 500, feeling left out, hovered like a hungry ghost, down 0.07%, neither daring to rise nor fall. Truly, capitalism’s own kind of limbo.

Whispers of a U.S.-U.K. trade deal meandered through the corridors, but hope, like an orphan in the rain, turned cold as new threats about tariffs—those ever-useful clubs for international arm-wrestling—ricocheted off digital walls. President Trump, a man for whom understatement is an unknown luxury, waved the idea of an 80% tariff on China around on Truth Social, slashing it down from 145%, apparently because drama requires suspense. Some had thought tariffs would be mercifully under 60%, but as it turns out, comedy thrives on disappointment. 🎭

In the corner, Nationwide’s Mark Hackett—somewhat reminiscent of a philosopher-monk trapped in a credit default swap—muttered about “ebbs and flows” of the news cycle, foreseeing that volatility would continue to spin us on its merry-go-round until someone, somewhere, delivered “tangible outcomes.” We wait, as always, for the next act of the circus.

Bitcoin’s surge

Meanwhile, as if to mock gravity itself, Bitcoin soared past $104,000 Friday morning amid the thunderous applause of institutions throwing cash into ETFs like confetti at a czar’s wedding. According to Bloomberg, these spot Bitcoin ETFs now have a mammoth $40.33 billion in cumulative flows—more than enough for a few castles, or at least a really nice set of NFTs. But alas, by close of day, the mighty cryptocurrency had sunk back to $103,000. Not even crypto kings are safe from the Wheel of Fortune. 🤑

In another corner of this farce, Wells Fargo did its arithmetic and discovered only 13 companies have withdrawn their earnings guidance this season. This, apparently, is a “positive surprise”—though if positivity means fewer people are catastrophically lost than expected, perhaps we should all revise our standards. Ford, Delta, Snap: great names for horses, tragic names for stocks pulling their promises from the hungry jaws of expectation.

Read More

2025-05-10 00:15