North Korea is accelerating the tests and there has been even a commentary by the Chinese media that soon they will reach ICBM nuclear capacity.
The US is deploying a third aircraft battle group towards the Sea of Japan. Three battle groups (Vinson, Reagan and now Nimitz) in the Pacific is almost unheard of – I checked up till 1985 – never happened.
As the USS Nimitz just left harbour, the travel time is circa 20 days.
And all this while President Trump is battling FBI Russian probes, nepotism (Kushner) and other blowback s at home and angry comments from the European allies.
Acting Assistant Secretary of State Susan Thornton told reporters in Beijing on Friday 26 that North Korea is a “time-limited problem set.” And the new South Korean President Moon Jae-in did not make himself any favors hinting that South Korea could move to be closer to China than US.
On the few positive side, the new carrier could be just a rotation and general Mattis said that a 2 Korean War would be tragic (well the first one was very tragic with close to 3 million killed, including 1.6 million civilians).
The only moment of reprieve for Trump was when he launched the cruise missile salvo to Syria.
Could he want to do the same? It would be a good distraction as shown in various Hollywood movies (“Wag the Dog” comes into my mind).
By the way: most of the time a war produces a very sharp and very short market correction that has always been the start of new rally.
This time would be the same – even if a cyberattack could potentially lead to just a temporary closure of all stock exchanges.
At the start of the 1 World War the main stock exchange NYSE closed between 30 July and 12 December – but brokers still buy/sold in over the counter markets and in 2015 the market almost doubled making a top that lasted until 1932!
investorpolitico 