In the Global Insight Weekly (here), trade wars and their potential effects take over the discussion. Tom Garretson, one of our strategists out of Minneapolis, reminds us that markets are forward-looking, trying at all times to predict the future for companies and economies. The Trump administration has injected a hitherto unseen level of policy uncertainty into the equation, which makes that prediction game harder. Trade wars are always negative for markets, as are other market manipulations (read: calling down individual public companies like Amazon). The bright spot, as much as there has been one, has been the ineffectiveness of the administration’s attempted tariffs, where we’ve seen carve-out after carve-out water down the bluster coming from the podium. Economic fundamentals have been and continue to be extremely strong, which has provided support, but policy considerations will be important to keep an eye on over the coming months. In the short-term it's not always about fundamentals; in the long-term it absolutely is.