It wasn’t long ago that trade announcements like those seen this week would have sent markets around the world careening lower. This week? Not so much. President Donald Trump on Monday sent letters to more than a dozen countries dictating new tariffs to take effect on August 1 on their exports to the U.S. While U.S. stocks took a hit following those announcements, they managed to stabilize Tuesday. Some international markets, meanwhile, shrugged off the news. Take South Korea’s Kospi index, for example. Despite the raft of tariff-related news, it’s still up more than 2% week to date. The benchmark rallied 1.8% on Tuesday and gained another 0.6% overnight Wednesday. .KS11 5D mountain KOSPI 5-day chart “While South Korean equities are not the arbiter of global risk, they provide a microcosm for the market’s view on tariffs,” wrote JPMorgan’s trading desk on Wednesday. “If South Korea equities can see a +2.0% rise after a tariff announcement that would lead to a -1.7% hit to GDP if realized, we can see that tariffs as a risk are no longer a going concern for the equity market and points to investors focusing on the fundamental drivers.” “If this is the case, there is little stopping a further equity melt up in global risk over the coming weeks and leaves the market positively disposed to any trade deals that come out through these negotiations,” the JPMorgan traders added. Korea is among the countries that received a letter from Trump. Japan, another one, is also holding up this week with a marginal gain. Even the U.S. S & P 500 is appears to be looking beyond these headlines. Week to date, the benchmark is down 0.9% — a loss that can easily be clawed back in one trading day. Elsewhere Wednesday on Wall Street, Goldman Sachs downgraded SolarEdge Technologies to neutral from buy. “With the company successfully turning around its business, which has been a driver of the strong stock price appreciation since the beginning of the year, we believe it is prudent to move to the sidelines on SEDG given general market uncertainty across the [residential] sector,” analyst Brian Lee wrote in a report published Tuesday. SolarEdge is down almost 2% premarket Wednesday.
