Ah, Liberation Day! Things Not To Sell April 4, 2025April 4, 2025 We’ve been under Vietnam’s thumb for so long. It’s about time we stood up for ourselves and made our own sneakers. Which will give the laid-off cancer researchers something to do. Drew W.: “The thing about people with his brand of personality disorder is that it can be really hard to tell when he’s lying, when he’s come to believe his lies, when he’s psychotic, or when he’s just an idiot.” Bob F.: “The tariff rates were calculated based on the trade deficit? Trade deficit divided by trade volume? This is crazy! This has to be worse than most people could have envisioned.” Kevin R.: “Well, now the economists and bankers know what the scientists and doctors felt like when he told everyone to inject bleach to ward off COVID.” Thomas Friedman: Trump Just Bet the Farm — our farm. . . . If Trump turns out to be right — that we’ll still enjoy the economic benefits and stability we’ve had for nearly a century even if America suddenly shifts from a benign hegemon to a predator, from the world’s most important proponent of free trade to a global tariffing giant, from the protector of the European Union to telling Europe it’s on its own and from a defender of science to a country that forces out a top vaccine specialist like Dr. Peter Marks for refusing to go along with quack medicine — I will stand corrected. But if Trump turns out to be wrong, he will have sown the wind, and we as a nation will reap the whirlwind. But so, too, will the rest of the world. And I can tell you, the world is worried. When I was in China last week, more than a few people asked me if Trump was launching a “cultural revolution” the way that Mao did. Mao’s lasted 10 years — from 1966 to 1976 — and it wrecked the whole economy after he instructed his party’s youth to destroy the bureaucrats that he thought were opposing him. If the Republican Congress wants to save the country and the world, it had better find its spine really fast. Putin and Xi are winning. Big time. Tomorrow, April 5, will be the single biggest day of protests since Trump retook office, and if you haven’t found a Hands Off! event to be part of, you can click here to join one near you. THINGS NOT TO SELL A couple of weeks ago, I suggested buying puts on the broad market indexes — the Dow (DIA) or the S&P (SPY) or NASDAQ (QQQ). I hope they expire worthless because — somehow, miraculously — this ends well. But I fear they may grow ever more valuable. Most of my nutty speculations are getting killed, but, for now, at least, my two least nutty and speculative, CHRB and BKUTK, remain strong (the former, because it promises to pay 53 cents a quarter until August of next year when it will be redeemed at $25 . . . though in this crazy world, who knows? . . . the latter, because it is a very conservatively run community bank with a loyal customer and investor base selling for 7 times earnings and less than half its book value). As to the rest (or at least the ones that come to mind) . . . I haven’t sold my CNF, because its business is in China, which may do relatively better than the U.S. in the years to come, if and as they come to be seen as the more stable, reliable trading partner — and sells at less than 3 times earnings. (In fact, a long-standing order I had in to buy yet a little more at 71 cents “good til canceled” was executed this morning — with money I could truly afford to lose.) I haven’t sold my PRKR, because none of what’s going on should affect the outcome of its several patent-infringement claims. So it remains as speculative as ever — heads it’s a quintuple or ten-tuple, tails it’s zero. Or my ANIX (if its cancer treatments prove effective — however long that shot may be — it will surely be worth billions, not today’s $80 million) or my OPRT or SQNS or UNIT or, yes, even my by-now-longest-of-long shots BOREF (not least because no brokerage firm I know of currently accepts orders for it). Needless to say, when things look really bleak and people are panicking, it’s a better time to buy than to sell. And today may be the bottom. But I can see “Dow 26,000” just as easily as a snap back to good times. I hope I’m wrong!