{"id":9858,"date":"2026-04-17T16:30:14","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T16:30:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/04\/17\/a-trump-madman-theory-of-the-stock-market-the-bulwark\/"},"modified":"2026-04-17T16:30:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T16:30:14","slug":"a-trump-madman-theory-of-the-stock-market-the-bulwark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/04\/17\/a-trump-madman-theory-of-the-stock-market-the-bulwark\/","title":{"rendered":"A \u2018Trump Madman Theory\u2019 of . . . the Stock Market – The Bulwark"},"content":{"rendered":"

Programming note:<\/strong> At noon in the East and 9:00 a.m. in the West, tickets for our <\/span>Bulwark Live: California<\/strong> shows <\/span>go on sale for everyone<\/a>. I\u2019m not going to make it out there for this tour, but you\u2019ll be in great hands with my best friends Sarah and Tim and Sam Stein. These shows are truly great; they feed the soul. Don\u2019t sleep on this, SoCal friends. <\/span><\/p>\n

And today at 12:30 p.m. ET I\u2019ll be on with Catherine Rampell for <\/span>Receipts Live<\/strong> on <\/span>Substack<\/a> and <\/span>YouTube<\/a>.<\/span>
The American economy is not great right now. We\u2019ve had the largest oil shock in history at the same time that job growth has been flat and unemployment has ticked up. Inflation is not runaway, but it is persistent.
Yet even as the actual real world is not-great, the speculative world of the stock market is going gangbusters.
Here are two news items from this week that I\u2019d like you to rationalize. First, the <\/span>Financial Times<\/a> <\/span><\/em>on April 13:<\/span>
The last oil tankers to traverse the Strait of Hormuz before the outbreak of war will reach refineries in the coming days, in a pivotal moment analysts warn could herald physical shortages in Europe and the US within weeks.
The final ships to clear the strait before the Iran war began on February 28 are expected to reach their destination in Malaysia and Australia by April 20, intensifying the supply shock rippling across Asia.
But with Asian refineries responding by buying up a record number of crude oil cargoes that would normally have sailed to Europe and the US, analysts said refiners in some of the world\u2019s wealthiest countries may soon also face shortages.
\u201cIt will hit the west in a month when all the Asian cargoes bought leave the Atlantic basin,\u201d said Nic Dyer, an analyst at Energy Aspects.
And here\u2019s the <\/span>FT<\/em> two days later:<\/span>
How do you reconcile these pieces of information?<\/span>1<\/a>
I have a theory.
For a decade Trump apologists have toyed with the \u201cMadman Theory\u201d of foreign policy\u2014the idea that <\/span>ackshually<\/em> it\u2019s good to have a crazy president because rival states will give him whatever he wants since no one knows what he\u2019s capable of.<\/span>
As Andrew Egger <\/span>explained recently<\/a>, the Iran war has disproven the Trump Madman Theory in the realm of foreign policy.<\/span>
But what if it\u2019s is true for the financial world?
Here\u2019s my Madman Theory of the Stock Market:<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Programming note: At noon in the East and 9:00 a.m. in the West, tickets for our Bulwark Live: California shows go on sale for everyone. I\u2019m not going to make it out there for this tour, but you\u2019ll be in great hands with my best friends Sarah and Tim and Sam Stein. These shows are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9859,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-9858","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9858\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}