Ya know, three-day weekends are fun. Maybe it is just the idea of everything shutting down that is refreshing, or, maybe it is the permission to bypass your normal Monday thinking that refreshes. In any case, in my case at least, turning off a Monday now and then is a “pause that refreshes.”
In the world of trading, taking a Monday off now and then is a good thing as well, especially in these days of uncertainty. After what happened last week in the market, we all need to chill a bit and think long and hard about where the world goes from here, and I do mean the world.
This morning, I listened to a CNBC commentator discuss the idea that the U.S economy doesn’t need Europe to grow because US exports only comprise 7% of our GDP. This “theory” has several large holes.
First, it implies that our economy, in its current state of recovery from serious illness, could take a hit of even 1% to our GDP. Second, it dismisses the fact that even though Mexico and Canada are the primary markets for U.S exports, Europe is our primary trading partner. Europe buys nearly a quarter of all U.S exports, which accounts for 18% of the EU’s total imports. To grasp this, understand that the two largest economies in the world are the U.S. and the European Union. You could take the combined GDPs of China, Japan, Germany, France, Great Britain, Canada, and Brazil, add them together, and the total would not equal the combined GDP of the EU and the US. Simply, this means trade between the EU and the US accounts for nearly Given this, it boggles my mind that one could suggest a drop in exports to the EU, at this time in our recovery, would not make a difference in our recovery, or in our future growth, for that matter. Consider this …
Bilateral trade between the EU and US amounts to over $1 billion a day; investment links are even more substantial, totaling over $1.8 trillion a year. Each partner creates jobs for about 6 million workers on each side of the Atlantic, and EU-US trade accounts for almost 40% of world trade.
My point here is one I have made before – look past the talking heads on TV to formulate your conclusions about where you want to put your money to work. To dismiss the EU as a trading partner simply because US exports only comprise 7% of US GDP is not only silly, it is irresponsible. It is irresponsible because we need serious analysis from these folks. We don’t need topics that fill time or generate controversy for the sake of ratings.
These are difficult times as we move through a global economic recovery. We have huge global issues that could alter the recovery trend. We need serious and substantive discussion and debate about these issues. In lieu of that, we all need to do our homework to understand what is really going on so we can make quality decisions about where to put our money.
You see what an extra day off can do …
Trade in the day; invest in your life …
