Yesterday morning, when we were flooded with a barrage of apocalyptically bearish "research" by a generation of Wall Street sellside bankers who seemingly never lived through Trump's first trade war which which, as we explained previously, followed the following very simple algorithm...
For those who already forgot the first Trump trade war, we are nearing the time when everyone turns apocalyptically bearish and the White House leaks a bullish "trade war deal" trial balloon.
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) March 4, 2025
... we predicted that it would be ever so "slightly awkward when all the banks who made a recession their base case this week, make an unrecession their base case in 1 month."
Will be so slightly awkward when all the banks who made a recession their base case this week, make an unrecession their base case in 1 month.
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) April 8, 2025
One day later, we were right.... but not even we had an idea just how right we would be. Because in what was perhaps the pinnacle of Wall Street flipflopping, arguably the most important US bank made announced just before 1pm that it had made a recession its base case... and 73 minutes later rescinded the call!
No really: here is the sequence of events. At12:57pm Goldman chief economist Jan Hatzius publishes a report titled "Moving to a Recession Baseline."
Great... only 20 minutes later Trump steamrolled all over Wall Street's laughable "scenarios" (as if they really don't know how Trump negotiates yet), and blew up every single bearish scenario. And sure enough, at 2:10pm, or about 73 minutes after Hatzius emailed his first note, the Goldman chief economist published a note titled "President Trump Announces 90 Day Pause; Reverting to Our Previous Non-Recession Baseline."
Just like that the first recession call is over.
And now we wait as the rest of Wall Street's penguin crew falls in line and does the exact same thing.
For those who care, the notes are available to pro subscribers in the usual place.
