Thrilling Thursday – Markets Blast Higher on Trade Progress (Again?)

I feel like we're playing Peek-a-Boo!  

You know, the game in which you are able to surprise a baby over and over again with the same simple trick?  Yeah, "peek-a-boo" – whose got a trade deal?  You have a trade deal!  Good boy.   Where's the trade deal?  Peek-a-boo!  There it is?  Look, it's a trade deal.  Where's the trade deal?  Where is it?  Peek-a-Boo!  There it is!  Who's a good boy?  Where's the trade deal?  Do you see a trade deal?  Peek-a-Boo!  There it is!  

Isn't that fun?  I could play that game for months and, apparently, every time I play the market goes higher – no matter how many times I show some small amount of progress towards a trade deal WE FRIGGING HAD TWO YEARS AGO!  There is no imagined scenario in which the US is actually getting a "better" deal than the free trade deal we had BEFORE Trump began messing around.  Trump has forced China to make other trading alliances – and China is not going to throw that away just to please the unreliable US.  

Today's big reveal, that's good for a 150-point (0.5%) gain on the Dow is because Beijing, WITHOUT saying there will be a deal, laid our a framework for phasing out tariffs over time.  Officially, according to the WSJ:

BEIJING—China’s Commerce Ministry said China and the U.S. have agreed to lift some tariffs on one another in stages if the two countries reach a partial trade deal, a goal both have been building toward since October.

“If the phase-one deal is signed, China and the U.S. should remove the same proportion of tariffs simultaneously based on the content of the deal,” spokesman Gao Feng said at a regular press

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