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On Tuesday, I underwent a partial knee replacement on my right knee. It was a necessary step after more than a year—perhaps longer—of persistent pain that disrupted my sleep and made daily walks nearly impossible.
But here’s the twist: while the surgery was meant to relieve my suffering, the post-operative pain is even more intense. Even with strong medication, it’s a new level of discomfort. And physical therapy? That promises its own form of agony for the next three months. After that, I’ll go through it all again with my left knee.
So, in essence, I traded a long-term, chronic pain for a sharper, more intense—but temporary—one. A lifetime of suffering exchanged for a concentrated period of hardship with the promise of relief.
What kind of loss is this? How do we define it?
And more importantly—doesn’t this feel familiar?
Markets experience pain too. Long-term economic drags, unsustainable trends, and financial misalignments eventually reach a breaking point. Sometimes, the market chooses to rip the Band-Aid off—an intense, painful correction in exchange for future stability.
Is that what’s happening now? Are we enduring a necessary, short-term pain that ultimately leads to a stronger foundation?
I certainly hope so. Because in both surgery and investing, the goal isn’t just to avoid pain—it’s to ensure a healthier future.
WDH
No. Trump’s nonsensical tariffs are a self inflicted wound of epic proportions. Even the formula they used for the tariffs were ridiculous. If continued they will do long term damage to our country, as will the indiscriminate DOGE cuts.
I totally agree. Trump’s end game vision for tariffs is not realistic nor achievable. The stock market has no confidence in his ability to make this work.
What Trump’s doing, is a lot like tearing off a Band-Aid, one with a legacy in the Cold War, post WW2 reconstruction. The state of world trade was bad in that the US was bearing ridiculous costs in terms of tariffs and market hurdles that post NAFTA, post globalism, just meant hardship for the bottom 1/3, 1/2 of American families. It wasn’t a path that could be walked forever.
I don’t see this as a completely Trump thing. Post WW2 the prosperous nations bought into the Intl Maritime Order, replaced war and destruction as a path to acquire riches (which didn’t work very well) with eliminating empire and embracing trade (which has worked brilliantly).
So at some point globalism had to break the taxes on America that were needed to rebuild after WW2. We have to see the rest of the prosperous world take their places as part of establishing and maintaining the global order. It will be good for everyone. (could be the thing that unlocks Intl growth levels).
I have no idea how this will turn out. There are a lot of moving parts. Intl agreements rarely move forward in a straight line.
Those calculations Trump showed had nothing to do with tariffs imposed on the US by those regions/countries. That rate was calculated by categorizing our trade deficit with those places as a “tariff” on the US, and then imposing actual real tariffs on their imports to the US. He’s calling them reciprocal in a very pathetic attempt to make these tariffs not look like a declaration of trade war. It’s pure marketing, and pure garbage. Don’t believe him. No country on the planet has benefitted more from the expansion of global trade than the US. We’ve been the top dog for well over 100 years now.