Morning

Risk off: bonds up (a teeny bit), equities off (quite a bit, but after a huge rally yesterday), commodities generally down, with the sole exception of natural gas.

The politics bit

I had a chat with some guys about trade, agriculture and the environment. I am constantly surprised at how the ecowarriors have got control of the trade agenda. For what it’s worth, I think we should leave animal welfare and the climate to be sorted by direct action (such as a carbon tax or geoengineering) rather than creating complicated tariff regimes that impoverish consumers that spend a large part of their income on food and enrich agribusinesses, especially those can pay lobbyists to craft the regulations to block international competition which would threaten their clients. Anyway, voters love the idea of food independence and autarky in general, so there is no point in being an economics nerd and arguing against them just because they make voters worse off. Voters vote with their emotions, not with their wallets, it seems.

Wrap

I was away from my desk most of today. Generally, this seems to have been a classic risk off day. Treasurys [sic] up, equities down, VIX up, dollar ($DX) up, gold up. The odd one out was commodities: metals and softs were up.