Walmart posted decent quarterly earnings, but its forecast for the year ahead was lukewarm at best. This has led some analysts to question whether Walmart is simply hedging its bets in light of the Trump-driven economic uncertainty.

Across the board companies have been slammed for posting weak guidance in the recent earnings outlooks, citing the unpredictable nature of the Trump presidency as a major factor. The truth is that no public company can accurately forecast what's supposed to happen from a tariff and policy standpoint under this administration. I have considered taking some short positions on the other side of earnings specifically due to this behavior but I haven't found a pattern that I like for the companies that issue weak guidance and are punished for it.

Consumer sentiment is getting increasingly uncertain, which is guaranteed to cause a pullback in spending. We're all just not sure what Trump is going to do next or how it will impact our wallets. It's like trying to navigate a minefield without a map.

Inflation is certain to go up because of the lack of discipline on the budget deficit, which will only exacerbate the problem. It's a vicious cycle, and one that could have severe consequences for the markets but more importantly the millions of people who are at the losing end of all these foolish schemes masquerading as economic policy.

Log

• Really annoyed that a misclick on the terminal caused me to offload some Intel (INTC) options at a much lower price than anticipated. When clicking around in in the order ticket some combination of tweaks seems to cause the price to reset to the current Ask rather than my pre-configured target price.
• Good news in the morning led to an unsustainable rise for Apple (AAPL) and AMD which I was able to enter into at a good peak with some Put options.
• Overall pretty satisfied despite the human error causing a mediocre return on Intel.