Need To Know: This Is The New Safe Haven As The Trade Punches Keep Coming

Like Conor McGregor attacking a UFC bus, the tariff-lover-in-chief has ambushed a stock market that was driving toward a weekly win.

“Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, President Trump orders USTR to consider $100 billion in additional tariffs,” groans Oanda’s Stephen Innes. And so now the U.S. Trade Representative looks set to go all McGregor and swing a hand dolly at more Chinese imports, as today’s jobs report also gets attention.

A Chinese state news agency has offered a “measured response,” and other reactions from Beijing could be muted given it’s a holiday period over there, notes BK Asset Management’s Boris Schlossberg.

But while many investors assume Trump is just talking tough before negotiating, more twists seem likely, and the selling could turn “more intense,” Schlossberg warns.

Where can traders find shelter?

“The new safe haven is now volatility,” says Sunrise Capital’s Christopher Stanton for our call of the day. He’s among the money managers buying futures contracts tied to the VIX, a move that will look smart if the market keeps getting choppier.

“It’s the one thing that’s pretty much guaranteed,” Stanton tells The Wall Street Journal.

To be sure, saying “safe haven” is redundant, and going long the CBOE Volatility Index VIX, +6.76% can be tricky. That’s because you’ll “bleed away money” over time, as the Journal report notes. But Sunrise’s chief investment officer sounds over the moon about this trade.

“A small amount of this stuff can be a very potent hedge,” he beams.

One vehicle for such bets — the iPath S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures ETN VXX, -3.41%  , which has nearly $1 billion in investor money — is showing a year-to-date gain of 68%.

Even so, ETF.com’s analysts caution that such exchange-traded products “deliver poor long-term exposure to the VIX,” and they “have a history of erasing vast sums of investor capital over holdings periods as short as a few months.”

Read more: ‘This is nuts,’ says Republican senator of Trump’s latest tariff threat

And see: Investors buy up volatility ETFs going into the Trump era

Key market gauges

Futures for the Dow YMM8, -0.84%  , S&P 500 ESM8, -0.71% and Nasdaq-100 NQM8, -0.84% are slumping, but are coming off the lows hit as the latest trade-war scare arrived. The Dow DJIA, +0.99%  , S&P SPX, +0.69%  and Nasdaq Composite COMP, +0.49% were on track for weekly gains of between 1.7% to 0.2%, as of yesterday’s close.

Hong Kong’s equity benchmark HSI, +1.11% closed higher, helped by bets that the latest Trump threat may be all bluster, while mainland China’s markets continued their holiday break. (Happy belated Tomb Sweeping Day to you and yours!)

Europe SXXP, -0.30% , oil  CLK8, -0.42% and bitcoin BTCUSD, -2.22% are lower. Gold GCJ8, -0.06% is gaining, and the dollar index DXY, -0.13% is little changed.

See the Market Snapshot column for the latest action.

The chart

History suggests April could turn out OK for stock-market bulls. That’s the message from the chart above from Stock Trader’s Almanac editor Jeff Hirsch.

Earnings season is underway around mid-April, and Corporate America’s “results and guidance typically propel stocks higher into month’s end,” Hirsch writes in a post at his Almanac Trader blog.

Don’t miss: Brace for earnings pre-announcements to pick up in April

The buzz

Speaking of turbulence, indexing legend Jack Bogle says he’s “never seen a market this volatile to this extent in my career.” Has he forgotten 2008?

The figures for nonfarm payrolls arrived before the open, and the headline number of 103,000 came in well below forecasts for 170,000 jobs added.

A speech by Fed boss Jerome Powell this afternoon will have the market’s attention as well.

Check out: Powell may dismiss hot-economy talk from Jamie Dimon and Janet Yellen

Trump literally tossed aside his prepared remarks on taxes at an event in West Virginia, inspiring tweets like this:

More Facebook FB, +2.73% headlines: The company secretly deleted some of Mark Zuckerberg’s private messages, COO Sheryl Sandberg says the company was “too idealistic,” and WSJ columnist Peggy Noonan is hammering Zuck as follows: “The signal fact of Mr. Zuckerberg is that he is supremely gifted in one area — monetizing technical expertise by marrying it to a canny sense of human weakness. Beyond that, what a shallow and banal figure.”

Bad news for the slow-food movement? Campbell Soup’s CPB, +0.58% restructuring involves an accelerator.

Goodyear GT, +1.80% is facing a government probe over potentially faulty tires linked to deaths.

SMH SMH, -1.10% news: Micron MU, -6.65%  has been hit by a rare sell rating from UBS, and a short seller has targeted Nvidia NVDA, -2.15%  .

DoubleLine’s Jeff Gundlach has a question for you:

The stat

With 22 murders in March, London just had its most killings in one month in more than a decade. About 40% of youth homicides are gang-related, The Economist notes.

“It used to be men in their 20s — now children in school uniforms arrive with stab wounds,” says one London surgeon.

The number of people murdered in the U.K. capital in this year’s first three months was 50, leading to comparisons with New York City.

The quote

“I guess the eagle knew I was Canadian. I don’t know. But it came for me.” — Seattle Mariners pitcher James Paxton wound up as an eagle’s landing spot during some pre-game pomp in Minneapolis.

Random reads

Southern California has been rattled by its largest earthquake in several years.

Can you guess the U.S. cities with the most dog attacks on mail carriers?

But this postman may deserve to be bitten.

Tebow is at it again, hitting a 3-run homer on his first pitch in Double-A ball.

Former South Korean president Park Geun-hye is sentenced to 24 years in prison.

Hungarian hard-liner Viktor Orban looks on track for a third straight term.

“The rest of the U.S. might never match Elkhart’s sizzling pace...”

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