The United States slapped 50% tariffs on Canadian exports. Canada promised to retaliate on September 8. Mark Carney made the announcement. Trump made the tariffs. Nobody made a deal.
Retail traders saw the headline and panic-sold their portfolios. They checked their charts. They drew trendlines connecting the words "tariffs" and "collapse." They calculated Fibonacci retracements on the phrase "failed to reach a deal." One guy in Wisconsin shorted maple syrup futures because he thought it would hedge his Tim Hortons gift card.
The technical picture remains unchanged. Support at who-gives-a-f*ck. Resistance at nobody-cares. The 200-day moving average of trade negotiations is still pointing at absolutely nothing useful for your trading account. Canada will impose tariffs on September 8. The S&P will do whatever it was going to do anyway. Your stop loss will still get hunted. Your options will still expire worthless. The correlation between trade headlines and your ability to time the market remains zero.
Carney could have announced tariffs for tomorrow. He could have picked October. He went with September 8. Retail traders wrote that date in their calendars like it was earnings season. They set alerts. They prepared watchlists. They told their spouses they needed to be near their laptops that day because "something big" was happening with Canada.
Canada and the United States have been trade partners for decades. They share the longest undefended border in the world. They built supply chains together. And now some guy who can't read a chart thinks September 8 is the day his technical analysis finally works because two countries had a scheduling conflict.
Photo by John McArthur on Unsplash
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