Part of this could be due to the White House showing some willingness to ‘bend’ on specific sectors affected by the tariffs. As of now, I’m not entirely sure what’s actually exempt—and I’m fairly confident the White House isn’t either.  My favorite part is that Congress wants to remove Article 2 from the executive branch while they are failing in just about everything else related to our Great Republic.

Is Congress addressing today’s pressing spending issues while bond yields stay persistently high? 

So far, the answer is no. The tariffs will bring more money into the US Treasury since Congress is incapable of cutting spending. In a strange way, the tariffs appear to be gaining some traction—maybe that was the plan all along. Will it actually work? Who knows.

The VIX doesn’t seem nearly as concerned now as it was last week. Which makes me think—there had to be plenty of money to be made on the downside. After all, it did lose nearly half its value.

VIX puts have really not moved that much

Well, they have and they haven’t. Take a look at the circled areas on the VIX May 21 23 puts—they were actually more expensive last week when the VIX was at 30 than they are now.  That’s because the option volatility was 40 points higher than this week. As VIX has dropped, the VVIX, or volatility of volatility has dropped with it.