Market Analysis

Old school vs. right-now: taxes, trade, and your stocks Look, the old playbook said policy noise was just that, noise. You bought quality, you waited, you didn’t lose sleep over tax footnotes. That worked when rules didn’t change much. This year feels different. Tiny tweaks, buyback taxes, global minimum tax rules, targeted tariffs, are hitting where it hurts: after-tax earnings, cash flows, and the multiple the market is willing to pay by, you know, next Tuesday. Why 2025 matters: We’re staring at the end of 2025 with parts of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act up in the air.…

Old-school vs. now: does a strong dollar still matter for S&P 500 investors? Old-school playbook said the dollar didn’t really move the needle for broad U.S. equities. You focused on domestic demand, margins, maybe oil, and called it a day. FX was a stock-picker’s headache, not an index problem. Here’s the thing: that world’s kind of gone. The S&P 500 today is packed with mega-cap multinationals that price globally, source globally, and report in dollars. A stronger greenback now leaks into reported earnings, and, occassionally, into the multiple investors are willing to pay, way more than it used to. Look,…

The quiet EPS killers nobody budgets for Look, earnings per share lives and dies on stuff most people never model in their pretty spreadsheets. Two culprits keep showing up this year: one-off tariff refunds and a dollar that’s a little too strong for comfort. Both can make margins look better or worse in ways that feel operational but aren’t. If you’re wondering why comps are messy in 2025, that’s a big reason. FX is still a headwind for multinationals, and the refund checks that helped last year don’t repeat on schedule. I’ve watched this movie since the early-2000s, and it…

An insider tip: policy tweaks move margins before headlines do An insider tip: policy tweaks move margins before headlines do. So, here’s the thing, 2025’s big stories look like AI capex and shiny GPUs, but the undercurrent that actually nudges Big Tech margins and buybacks is way less glamorous: EU cloud portability rules and U.S. tariff refunds. They hit models quietly. They hit cash first. And they move procurement behavior months before any glossy investor deck admits it. I’ve watched this movie since Sarbanes-Oxley days; compliance-driven buying changes mix and price before sales teams even update their talking points. In…

Myth to ditch: “Tech is immune to tariffs and FX” Myth to ditch: “Tech is immune to tariffs and FX.” Look, Big Tech doesn’t float above trade policy or currency markets. It swims in them. Hardware, ads, cloud, app stores, so much of that runs through Europe that every tariff tweak and every euro move shows up in translated revenue, margins, and, yeah, guidance. I’ve watched more than one earnings call go sideways because a CFO said “FX headwind.” You could feel the multiple compress in real time. Here’s the thing: Europe is not a side dish for U.S. tech,…

What the pros are doing right now: pricing policy risk without panic So, here’s how the grown-ups are handling deglobalization chatter and tariff headlines in 2025: they’re not doomscrolling, they’re spreadsheeting. Pros start with scenarios, not vibes. They build tariff bands, 5%, 10%, 20%, 35%, and map each band to gross-margin impact by product and region. Then they stress-test the income statement: COGS sensitivity, pass-through odds, volume elasticity, and working-capital drag. Honestly, I wasn’t sure about this either the first time I modeled a 25% shock on a low-margin hardware line, but the math forces discipline. You stop guessing. Speaking…