Good morning, traders,
Some of you are probably wondering why the market’s been so calm lately, even though tariffs are flying in like bricks through a window, job growth is stalling out, and revisions keep chopping hundreds of thousands off previous payrolls.
And yet the S&P shrugs.
Well, I doubt it’s going to be shrugging for long. This calm is fake and it’s going to snap soon.
On Wednesday night, Trump came out swinging: 100% tariffs on imported semiconductor chips, with only one way out — “Build it in the U.S.”
That announcement came less than 24 hours before the administration smacked trading partners with a wave of “reciprocal” tariffs across a laundry list of exports.
Problem is, this is not strategy. It’s not policy, either. It’s just impulse.
There’s no warning, no process, no clarity.
And that’s the problem.
Look, I’ve seen how markets react when they’re hit with real uncertainty. And the current tariff environment is about as unpredictable as it gets.
The policy changes are not telegraphed or debated — they’re dropped like grenades.
Here’s how I’m handling all of it, and how you should too.
Head Out of the Sand
So far, the market has tried to brush it off.
But that won’t last. Especially not with monthly options expiration around the corner on August 15.
Volatility is sitting like a loaded spring.
Now throw in the latest jobs data and it’s a mess.
The unemployment rate ticked up to 4.2% in July. The economy added just 73,000 jobs, which was a big miss.
And worse, May and June job numbers were revised down by a combined 258,000, prompting Trump to fire the Bureau of Labor statistician behind them.
That’s not a typo. They took a quarter million jobs off the board. Quietly.
Where’s the media on that? Where’s the outrage?
And it’s not just the headline numbers.
Long-term unemployment rose again in the latest reporting period — now at 1.8 million. That’s 1 in 4 unemployed Americans stuck without work for over six months.
The White House keeps trying to spin this like we’re in a strong labor market. But the data says otherwise.
And if you’ve been paying attention over the past few years, there’s a pattern here.
Month after month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics drops a headline that makes things sound decent. Then comes the stealth revision a month or two later — quietly erasing jobs from the tally.
It’s always a subtraction. Never an addition.
Call it whatever you want. I call it cooking the books.
I stopped leaning on government jobs data during COVID. Most fund managers I know did the same.
You can’t build a real forecast on manipulated or massaged numbers. And that’s what this looks like.
Now connect the dots…
We’ve got erratic trade decisions with no economic logic. We’ve got a weakening job market that no one wants to talk about. And we’ve got a market full of traders acting like none of this matters (something I’ve been guilty of doing too lately).
Except it does matter.
Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But soon — likely before monthly OPEX — the market is going to price in the chaos.
And when it does, you don’t want to be caught off guard.
Find the Dislocation
So what do you do?
You stay sharp and active. You don’t sit on positions, hoping things will magically turn around.
This kind of environment is where smart traders make their money, not by guessing direction, but by recognizing dislocation.
Volatility trades. Hedged plays. Strategic short exposure.
These are the tools pros are using right now.
And if the tariffs keep coming, if jobs keep weakening, and if this administration keeps running economic policy through press releases instead of planning…
The market won’t just correct.
Stay street smart,
Jeff Zananiri
P.S. Join Aaron Hunziker today at 10 a.m. ET for APEX Live, where he’ll walk you through the setups we’re watching, how the market’s reacting, and where the real opportunities are right now.
Be ready.
📅 Today | ⏰ 10 a.m. | APEX Live
*Past performance does not indicate future results
