Covid was a black swan event. Unless we see something like the MBS collapse, the underlying economic weakness isn’t due to a such an acute root cause.

Not sure how comparable they are.

I know it’s not popular to bring politics into things on HN, but… From the outside at least, White House policy sounds like at least as much of a black swan event as COVID.

Black swan event should be unexpected. Trumps victory was within expected possibilities. It was also his second victory.

And his moves after winning were not unexpected either - he is doing what his opponents predicted he will do.

True. It must be added, that theres two wrenches in the machinery that transforms information into action currently.

Firstly - The average market behavior is average.

From experience, most people could not imagine anything of what was predicted, would come true. There is a large … debt of intellectual work that is being underwritten, allowing people to sell narratives which do not correspond to reality.

This is a direct result of a captured, unfair information environment.

As a result, the average behavior of the market is not pricing in these things, even if the plans were made clear.

A coronavirus causing a global pandemic at some point was even more expected though.

And even the erratic government reactions to the pandemic was not entirely unpredictable either to be fair.

Yes, expected at some point. Everyone knows when the election will happen, who is running, etc.

> Trumps victory was within expected possibilities.

While people felt that polls indicated a Harris victory and the margin of Trump's win was a surprise and a failure of forecasters, in reality it was always a toss-up in forecasts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationwide_opinion_polling_for...

Not at all, people voted for this and the outcome was expected by people paying attention.

I moved all of my money out of the US the week following the election.

> I moved all of my money out of the US the week following the election.

That sounds pretty black swan to me, I'm guessing you never felt the need sheet any previous election? Being predictable and being unique are different things.

Black swan event: an event that comes as a surprise, has a major effect, and is often inappropriately rationalized after the fact with the benefit of hindsight.

Trump is the direction taken by U.S. politics for decades now. I could see it post- 9/11, and I was not the most enlightened teenager. Others probably saw it coming years or decades earlier.

> Trump is the direction taken by U.S. politics for decades now. I could see it post- 9/11, and I was not the most enlightened teenager. Others probably saw it coming years or decades earlier.

While it is kinda the same direction, it also has two Black Swan components:

1) What he's doing actually matches the rhetoric, e.g. actually trying to kick out illegal immigrants even though they're the (underpaid) farm workers holding back food price inflation.

2) It definitely wasn't on my metaphorical bingo card that someone with multiple felony convictions and who had been impeached twice for trying to interfere with the democratic hand over of power, went on to become the popular choice for president.

Because his criminal record has little to do with the policies he is pushing.

Sure, the election of a convict was a risky bet, but the appearance of the policies he is pushing was really not.

If Harris had won, she wouldn't have sent ice to invade cities and kidnap people. She wouldn't have hugely increased tariffs, etc. see also putting political minders at network news places as part of federal sales approvals.

Or threatened invasions against EU territories? No way anyone was predicting that.

His policy will not work. You cannot pivot America into a second-sector economy while denying China the third sector. Macro 101 stuff: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_sector

America has two options; either become the slave of China and enter our century of humiliation, or deny Chinese access to free trade by competing in market economics. Protectionism does not balance America's trade deficits, and US citizens cannot compete against Mexican labor (let alone Chinese prison labor). The economics of it genuinely don't get any simpler than this; American manufacturing will be for naught if we cannot compete in a free market. We already have a successfully financialized economy, throwing out Reaganomics for an even more shit deal is peak neoreactionary nonsense.

History has a word for people that supported Hitler's economic policies but disapproved of his social policies.

Nazi.

Not supporting him in any way, shape or form.

Just not surprised by his policies.

He was quite vocal about them during his campaign.

> Others probably saw it coming years or decades earlier.

I saw the signs of the beginnings of it decades ago (shortly following the Reagan era) but I had zero clue that it would (or even could) ever get as completely mad-house outta-control as it has. I've watched the situation devolve year after year for decades now, and all the while I kept foolishly believing "It can't keep getting worse forever. People are gonna wake up any second now." Well, here we are. Not entirely sure how we got here, or how we'll ever get back, but... This is how it is, I guess. :shrug:

> "It can't keep getting worse forever. People are gonna wake up any second now."

That's exactly where I am. I keep wondering what rock bottom looks like. And I fear the day that we'll find out.

"Rock bottom" is when the last human stands alone in their luxury doomsday bunker just waiting to die and realizes that dying with all the money means literally nothing in the grand scheme of the Universe. They didn't "win" anything of lasting value after all...

That's a cheerful view to start the morning with!

> I moved all of my money out of the US the week following the election.

I did it a little more than a week following the election, but same. I even sold any ETFs with exposure to the US market I previously owned. People thought I was overreacting selling my VGRO, but the YTD returns for my ex-US portfolio are about 150% of what I could have expected with my old holdings and the peace of mind is priceless.

better pull out of Asian and European markets too! the US isn't going to go down alone.

in fact, you should just put it all in gold and keep it under your pillow

great plan. Definitely comes from someone who read my comment and is well informed about both the world and my personal situation!

This, but unironically

in hindsight: very, very good investment advice :)

Until people show up at your house with guns and take your gold.

Or until gold becomes literally worthless as a trade commodity because bullets, medicine, food, and potable water are the only valued new $money...

I've kept about 1/3 of my investments in a non-US index fund for years, basically as a hedge against some unforeseen event in the US (having 100% exposure to the economy that my job is in seemed suboptimal). In 2016, all that really changed was that the event was now foreseen -- my domestic investments still outperformed that portion until this year.

This year is the first time that fund outperformed the rest of my portfolio. Not massively, since I do have some holdings that benefited from the AI boom, but noticeably. Just adding 1 to n here. Thanks for reminding me to rebalance, and maybe find another non-AI-related hedge just in case.

Most professional financial planning would have the equity assets portion of the portfolia you at ~30% investing in foreign assets (good times and bad).

Black swan is not quite right. It's move of an attempted phase change. It was possibly predictable, but definitely disruptive.

Speaking of impending capital controls, which countries aren’t likely to have them once the markets crash and globalism finally dies?

300k votes in 3 swing states got Trump the electoral college in 2024, separate from him getting the popular vote.

In 2020 Biden won 3 swing states by 200k votes. Trump won in 2016 by 80k swing state votes - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45570973

It's the swing states that matter, not the popular vote.

From the inside, this is nothing compared to COVID. 2025 feels a bit weird but to compare it with 2020 is laughable.

For (services) software people, 2020 was great: work from home, sky-high jobs demand (perhaps Zero-interest related), surging demand and revenue because by people were bored at home. Brick and mortar retail workers were screwed in 2020.

It is possible that 2025 could be the opposite, the software jobs market os already spooky for juniors, and could get much worse with an AI bust - guess what companies will do to show investors they are making up for written-off AI investments? A recession will lead to a drop in demand for online services like streaming, online shopping as people tighten their belts, upward ratcheting of subscription prices will only make the drop worse.

I think with an AI bust we're more likely to see juniors actually start getting jobs at reasonable rates... but only after short-sighted layoffs of a bunch of more senior positions as opposed to dumping AI products that so many companies have already signed year+ long contracts for in advance.

Depends on your country, 2025 can be either the super easy life or the super hard life compared to 2020.

That view sounds like it's coming from a position of a white person, not married to a minority, not an immigrant. That describes me too. Software engineer, more secure economically.

Even people with visas or permanent residency, or who even look like they might be Hispanic are justifiably worried about a random car pulling them over and breaking their window. If you aren't aware or concerned, I call that oblivious or a denial of reality. Or privilege (edit: corrected spelling).

It's different in some ways of course than with covid.

> Or privaledge.

Some may even say "privilege".

After all, it sure as a privilege to not be a criminal or human trafficker.

Spelling autocorrect is apparently not one of mine.

A week before the election I bought shares in Lynas, (the major rare earth producer outside of China) when it seemed Trump could win.

Rare Earth exports was a known lever that the CCP uses in a trade war, and Trump was very likely to restart his previous one.

However, the Pentagon putting money into MP Materials was quite unexpected, and people are still throwing money at them.

> Covid was a black swan event

I beg to differ. Epidemiologists and public health planners always knew such a pandemic would happen eventually. In fact, it wasn't even surprising that it came from a coronavirus as this virus group was the most likely contender with the influenza family.

The only open question was when. We dodged the bullet several times over the past two decades with SRAS, H5N1, MERS and H1N1 (notice, two influenza and two coronaviruses), but one virus slipping through was definitely the most likely outcome.

And I can confidently tell you: it will happen again.

Ah, so an asteroid obliterating NYC is not a black swan event because it's statistically likely to happen over long enough time horizons?

If you can forsee the event, but not predict the time, it's just as bad as an even you cannot forsee.

That's a grey swan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_swan

Exactly. The only thing that could be considered a black swan event is something foreshadowed or predicted by no one ever, even in fiction.

If all rivers suddenly turned to wine and killed all the crops? Not a black swan event, water gets turned to wine in the bible.

As you can see this attitude makes the phrase "black swan event" very useful.

That would be a burgundy swan event.

Because something likely to happen over the next billions of years and something that will most likely occur in your lifetime are entirely equivalent indeed…

You guys should really go get some nuance at the retail store.

>> The only open question was when ... >> And I can confidently tell you: it will happen again.

If you can't tell us when, your predicition is useless.

Just because you can't tell when something will happen does not make it a Black Swan event…

Sure, all probabilities go to 1 over a large enough time span. I don't think there's anything useful you can do with that information. Being early is the same as being wrong.

A contagious disease pandemic is not a black swan event. We have had many of them before and there are people whose day jobs are to model and plan for them.

It was the only such event in most people's lifetimes.

We've had, in this century, SARS, swine flu, MERS, ebola (× like 4), mpox (×2 apparently), Zika virus, and COVID-19. AIDS is a pandemic that's been going on since before I was born.

Pandemics and pandemic scares are really friggin' common.

Several of those were not pandemics (I assume this is why you used the phrase "pandemic scares" as a catch-all).

Regardless of official classification, I don't recall any of them having anywhere near the same global impact as COVID.

How many of those resulted in worldwide lockdowns, masking mandates, and widespread testing requirements for travel? I believe the answer is: 1.

This is a very pedantic counter argument that leans on the fact that "pandemic" has too broad of a definition. There was nothing else like COVID in my (40 year) lifetime.

Half of them have, actually. The COVID response was heavily based off of the SARS response. The major difference with COVID is that it's the first time first world countries were asked to employ standard public health responses in many decades.

> The major difference with COVID is […]

Those are, obviously to me as a different reader, the entire point.

These are not mutually exclusive properties. Pandemic modellers do not predict exactly when a pandemic will emerge, they predict how a pandemic will evolve once it emerges. The actual emergence of a pandemic is still about as predictable as, say, a stock market crash or a war.

The virulence and adaptability of Covid makes it very much a black swan.

A black swan is something you didn't even imagine before encountering it. If you never imagined anything like COVID that's likely because your day job is unrelated to health emergency preparedness.

I've imagined things far worse than covid my friend. I write sci-fi and horror. Other people's "black swans" are my evening wind-down exercise. Just because I've seen some shit doesn't mean that when it tears through the world and it's new to y'all it won't be a black swan.

+ N. Taleb many time said covid is NOT a black swan. By definition.

Trump fired many people whose job it was to plan for it. RFK Jr canceled vaccine research and various practices that will make it worse. I never imagined such idiocy on top of Trump's more likely racism policies. Future pandemics are much more likely now.

Then almost anything is not a black swan by this logic.

Russian invasion is not a black swan event, we had many of them before and there are people whose day job is to plan for them.

Tsunami, earthquake are another examples. We had them before and there are plans for such events.

Tariffs can easily be turned off, and in December the supreme Court could rule that they majority of tariffs in place are illegal AND must be refunded.

According to Polymarket, there's a >50% chance that happens: https://polymarket.com/event/will-the-supreme-court-rule-in-...

Polymarket gives a >50% chance of the tariffs being ruled illegal, not that they would be refunded - the market only gives a ~8% chance of the tariffs being ruled illegal AND and order to refund: https://polymarket.com/event/will-the-court-force-trump-to-r...

Don't forget that Howard Lutnick, the Commerce secretary and tariff fanatic, has his sons betting against them at his former firm.

Trump’s Commerce Secretary Loves Tariffs. His Former Investment Bank Is Taking Bets Against Them: https://www.wired.com/story/cantor-fitzgerald-trump-tariff-r...

And the senate probe into said conflict of interest: https://www.finance.senate.gov/ranking-members-news/wyden-wa...

I can push that market to 100% with 10k usd so I wouldn’t weight that too strongly as evidence, although I agree on the tariffs part.

Can you explain how you reached that conclusion? If I'm reading the order book correctly, you'd need much more than 10k to remove all the opposing liquidity. And of course you can't assume that other participants will stand by idly, when you put in enough money to move the market away from what they believe is correct you might discover a lot more contra liquidity appears. So it might not stay where you want it for more than a moment.

That’s cumulative liquidity available on the right hand side.

i.e the ~13k shown at 99c and ~12k show at 98c aren’t independent. If the 12k is taken at 98c, only 1k would be left avail at 99c.

You’re right if you wanted to hold the price there it would cost you more, however if there isn’t a straight arb, maybe not instantly, and (some) smart bettors might be wary of such a market going to near 100%

> Guess what happened next?

Stimulus and zero interest rate followed by 10% inflation.

and that inflation was (partially) due to the lack of supply of production (say, of cars). Which is due to the lack of supply of components (that was cancelled due to expectation of low demand, as well as various shipping/cargo issues in the ensuing period).

A gigantic contracyclic fiscal policy was adopted to sustain demand.

Do you think Trump and the GOP will do that anytime soon?

At least until such time as his polling stumbles the GOP will do absolutely anything he says. And Trump will do whatever it takes to keep the grease coming in, I really think him turning on the printing presses is a long from the least likely scenario.

Would the GOP have to eat large quantities of excrement, yes. Have they become used to doing that (cf Epstein), yes.