• After 100 days in office, Trump has signed over 140 executive orders¹
• Trump blinks first in his global trade war with a 90 day pause on tariffs
• Negative investor sentiment has eclipsed 2008 levels which creates a unique opportunity in discounted valuations

Trump has now been in office for 100 days and he’s certainly been busy. In fact, with over 140 executive orders signed he’s got more done than any other president we can remember in this window. The sheer volume of orders and memorandums has flooded the courts in a way that they simply can’t keep up to block them, so whilst court battles will drag on for years, the damage is being done. The chart below illustrates this flurry of unprecedented action:

Source: Macquarie Asset Management

No Surprise

The President is doing exactly what he said he would do: take aggressive action on immigration, reform the government, impose tariffs, depreciate the dollar and upset the global order. A lot of it is actually working, he has not deported millions of illegal immigrants, ‘only’ tens of thousands, but the loud and aggressive stance has meant that border crossings are the lowest they’ve been in decades. The administration has successfully depreciated the dollar which is arguably the best tariff of all. He’s the best in the business at occupying the noise cycle, albeit hardly for positive reasons, but he wants to be the star of the show and he’s achieving that. His approval ratings have tanked, but this is a man on a mission who doesn’t need to worry about another election campaign. The only known is that Trump won’t change.

Source: VT De Lisle America

Cutting through the noise

It makes it very difficult to predict the actions of a president or administration where half of what they say is not what they intend to do, however, there is certainty in the uncertainty. Trade policy uncertainty leads to market volatility and weighs on the outlook for activity. All the major central banks, except for the Bank of Japan, have commenced an easing cycle and are fully aware of the negative growth consequences of Trump’s tariff agenda.

Whilst the Fed decided to hold interest rates steady this week, Fed’s Waller suggested that they would prioritise recession risks over inflation concerns. We saw back in 2018, during the first round of Trump’s US – China trade war, that tariffs impacted growth far more than inflation. In the UK, the BoE broke away from the Fed’s path and cut rates again on Thursday with inflations risks ebbing.

Bowmore Portfolios

All the economic and political uncertainty has shored up and could accelerate the path of interest rates. We maintain a small-cap overweight which will benefit from a lower rate environment and believe that the central banks will act in order to avoid a recession. Trump blinking with his 90-day pause on tariffs also indicates that he doesn’t want to be remembered as the president that drove the US into a 1930s style depression. With both fiscal and monetary support, we believe we avoid a global recession in 2025 and so remain on the upper end of each risk profile’s equity weighting. The last ten weeks have also seen off the scale bearish sentiment, in fact, this is the worst investor sentiment we’ve seen in 20 years, lower even than 2008. If all that negativity is priced in, it creates a favourable risk/reward relationship to the upside.

Warren Buffett’s famous quote, who announced he was stepping down as the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway this week at the age of 94, springs to mind here: “Be fearful when others are greedy and be greedy when others are fearful”. It certainly helped this month:

Source: LSEG DataStream, data as at 08/05/2025

The value of your investments can go down as well as up, so you could get back less than you invested. Past performance is not a guide to future performance.

Sources:

¹ Macquarie Asset Management, 8 May 2025