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Uncertainty fuelled by President Donald Trump’s trade tariff moves has unsettled U.S. stock markets – and now it’s rippling through to Australia too.
Any volatility in the markets can be unnerving at the very best of times, so I asked HotCopper contributor, investment expert, educator, and economic author Andrew Baxter how to read current market conditions.
“We’ve had the talk of tariffs, we’ve had interest rate moves, we’ve had a lot of social programs going on – the dispute between Russia and Ukraine and the very public spat in the White House – it’s been a lot for people to digest,” Baxter said while speaking to HotCopper in the Expert Exchange series.
“Part and parcel of that is why we’ve seen the savage level of sell-off we have over the last week or so, as people come to grips with the news flow and try to make sense of it.
“Maybe we’re on the other side of it.”
However: “There’s always the potential for further downside”
“We’ve been in an incredibly strong bull market,” Baxter said.
“Since 2022, we’ve seen the market in the bottom left to top right trend.
“So seeing a pullback of 10% or 15%, I guess it’s like running up a hill: [When] you get to the top of it you’ve got to stop and pause for breath.
“We’ve seen that pull back [before].
“When you look at the underlying earnings, we’ve come out of an earnings season which has been largely solid, about 40% up on expectations… so the underlying machinery that’s driving markets remains intact.
“It’s the newsflow and the chaos around that, I think, which has really seen us on the back foot – so to speak.”
Andrew Baxter called it a “buying opportunity” – as long as the buying horizon isn’t too short. In this interview, he shares thoughts on what some of those buying opportunities could be.
You can hear more from Andrew on the Money And Investing podcast, right here on Hot Copper as well as Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube.
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