A Note of Caution
I mentioned the nightmare economic scenario a while back of declining GDP combined with rising inflation.
This scenario is dangerous for the economy because the Fed's main lever is interest rates. You can't lower rates to stimulate the economy when inflation is rising, or if you do, you risk inflation surging out of control. This happened during Nixon's administration when prevailing monetary policy considered inflation less of a priority. That turned out to be a disastrous miscalculation.
In the 1970s, the exogenous shock was a tripling of oil prices by OPEC in a very short period of time. Now, a single man has started a trade war with the entire world and imposed massive tariffs.
The economy tends to not handle exogenous shocks well.
U.S. firms have increased imports substantially in an attempt to stockpile inventory before tariffs are collected, but companies don't have giant warehouses laying around unused. And the vast majority of American business have a JIT (just in time) inventory system because it's far more profitable to not have enormous amounts of inventory sitting around.
Stockpiling will only work for a short time. Within weeks, consumers will start seeing holes on shelves where products used to be.
If you have investments, it's a very good time to talk to your financial advisor. They should have already called you, but if they haven't, you should call them. And if they're advising you that this is a time to be aggressive, I would seek the opinion of another financial advisor. Quickly.
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