Trump Victory Winners and Losers

James West, The Midas Letter

Not a minute to lose.

So many are surprised by Trump’s win by a significant margin, though in the financial world, where all that matters is how much tax the government is going to take, it was expected. While it remains to be seen how much of Project2025 actually makes it into policy, there are opportunities that cannot go overlooked for the financially agile.

First, and maybe most obviously, I think $DJT and $TSLA are obvious wins. Both are up significantly in the pre-market.

With the implied reduction in tax revenue for the US government, gold and silver should see strong buy-side interest as the reduced income means more bond issuances to cover interest payments.

Obviously crypto is a big winner, with Trump being touted as the “first Bitcoin president.” Currently, the stuffing is getting knocked out of the precious metals sector as a result of the crypto segment eating gold and silver’s lunch.

But here’s the question: if the argument against gold being part of the US dollar reserve asset backing is that there’s just not enough of it, how does that square with Bitcoin’s maximum issuance of 21 million bitcoins?

The immediate kneejerk market response of gold going lower while $BTC surges is likely going to be short-lived, because Bitcoin will quickly price itself out of the market with no ability to expand its volume beyond that 21 million. Though let us not dismiss the idea that the Bitcoin mandarins could be coerced into some sort of modification to accommodate Trump’s ambition for it.

There is likely going to be a sharp increase in drill permitting in the oil and gas sector, which will no doubt benefit some publicly traded names with US domestic prospective holdings. Drillers, too, should be the beneficiaries of Trump’s victory.

When Trump was last in office, here is a list of ChatGPT-generated policy initiatives that were deemed favourable to business and industry:

Tax Reforms: The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 reduced the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%. This significant cut increased after-tax profits for many companies, enabling them to invest more in expansion, hiring, and research and development.
Deregulation: The previous administration focused on rolling back regulations across various industries, including environmental protections and financial oversight. This reduction in regulatory burdens lowered compliance costs and gave businesses greater operational flexibility.
Trade Policies: Emphasizing “America First,” tariffs were imposed on certain imported goods to protect domestic industries. While this benefited some manufacturers by reducing foreign competition, it also led to increased costs for businesses reliant on imported materials.
Energy Sector Support: Policies favored the expansion of fossil fuel industries by opening up federal lands for drilling and reducing restrictions on coal and oil production. Energy companies benefited from increased opportunities and reduced regulatory hurdles.
Infrastructure Initiatives: Proposals for large-scale infrastructure projects aimed to modernize roads, bridges, and airports. Such initiatives could create jobs and boost industries related to construction, engineering, and manufacturing.
Healthcare Policy Changes: Efforts to modify or repeal parts of the Affordable Care Act were intended to reduce healthcare costs for businesses. Changes could lead to more customizable health plans and potentially lower premiums for employers.
Immigration Policies: Stricter immigration controls were designed to protect domestic labor markets. For businesses, this could result in a tighter labor supply, impacting industries that rely on immigrant workers.
Investment Incentives: Tax incentives and opportunity zones were established to encourage investment in underdeveloped areas, stimulating economic growth and offering new markets for businesses.

Trump and the Project 2025 Agenda

The biggest question we now have to face is how much of the Project2025 Agenda is actually going to be implemented?

In a worst case scenario for business and private citizens alike is the implementation of the fundamentalist Christian authoritarian theocracy expressed in the pages of the Project2025 manifesto.

And to what extent is the “this is the last time you’ll need to vote” statements that were part of his early campaign going to manifest?

The American people might yet be the biggest losers of the electoral outcome if a militarily enforced dictatorship is what is planned for America. The rest of the world will be similarly influenced toward non-democratic governance, or at the very least, authoritarian theocratic elements in the political apparatus of many countries will feel emboldened and empowered. ~~James West, The Midas Letter

James West, The Midas Letter

Not a minute to lose.

First, and maybe most obviously, I think $DJT and $TSLA are obvious wins. Both are up significantly in the pre-market.

With the implied reduction in tax revenue for the US government, gold and silver should see strong buy-side interest as the reduced income means more bond issuances to cover interest payments.

When Trump was last in office, here is a list of ChatGPT-generated policy initiatives that were deemed favourable to business and industry:

Tax Reforms: The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 reduced the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%. This significant cut increased after-tax profits for many companies, enabling them to invest more in expansion, hiring, and research and development.
Deregulation: The previous administration focused on rolling back regulations across various industries, including environmental protections and financial oversight. This reduction in regulatory burdens lowered compliance costs and gave businesses greater operational flexibility.
Trade Policies: Emphasizing “America First,” tariffs were imposed on certain imported goods to protect domestic industries. While this benefited some manufacturers by reducing foreign competition, it also led to increased costs for businesses reliant on imported materials.
Energy Sector Support: Policies favored the expansion of fossil fuel industries by opening up federal lands for drilling and reducing restrictions on coal and oil production. Energy companies benefited from increased opportunities and reduced regulatory hurdles.
Infrastructure Initiatives: Proposals for large-scale infrastructure projects aimed to modernize roads, bridges, and airports. Such initiatives could create jobs and boost industries related to construction, engineering, and manufacturing.
Healthcare Policy Changes: Efforts to modify or repeal parts of the Affordable Care Act were intended to reduce healthcare costs for businesses. Changes could lead to more customizable health plans and potentially lower premiums for employers.
Immigration Policies: Stricter immigration controls were designed to protect domestic labor markets. For businesses, this could result in a tighter labor supply, impacting industries that rely on immigrant workers.
Investment Incentives: Tax incentives and opportunity zones were established to encourage investment in underdeveloped areas, stimulating economic growth and offering new markets for businesses.

Trump and the Project 2025 Agenda

The biggest question we now have to face is how much of the Project2025 Agenda is actually going to be implemented?

In a worst case scenario for business and private citizens alike is the implementation of the fundamentalist Christian authoritarian theocracy expressed in the pages of the Project2025 manifesto.

And to what extent is the “this is the last time you’ll need to vote” statements that were part of his early campaign going to manifest?

The narrative for BTC and other cryptocurrencies is that every government around the world has high debt-to-GDP ratios. It means they are going to print more currency. It means there is a need for alternative currency. In the past, this alternative currency was gold.

Gold is not very portable. It’s a good store of value. It’s not as great of a store of value as BTC in terms of actually storing it. BTC, you can store it on a hard drive or at Coinbase. Gold, if you have bars you have to keep them in a bank or you have to dig a hole in your backyard. And you can’t send gold around the world as easily as you can send BTC.

I still think this rally has legs. If you go back to where the breakout happened, we were really in November of 2024 that was the beginning of this bull market in my mind because that was the first time we hit an all-time high in a couple years. Then we rallied. We pulled back. We tested that level again.

The uptrend, in my mind and with what I’m seeing, is still intact. We’re just in an oversold condition right now.

Nvidia’s $900 billion round-trip this week wasn’t about some revelation in Jensen Huang’s chip factory. The business is firing on all cylinders – and may yet be one more reason for the market to soar higher into 2026.

The culprit was the macro — one gust of wind from the labor market and trillions in valuation shifted like sand dunes.

Nvidia’s earnings lifted the market at the open, but the jobs report’s undertow snapped sentiment like a dry twig. As we pointed out this morning, the S&P notched its biggest intraday reversal since April.

The first half of the move was classic Wall Street choreography: blowout earnings, analysts breathless with adjectives, and every fund manager terrified of underweighting the patron saint of AI.

In April, following the “Liberation Day” low, the indexes took off in the morning only to crash later in the day. The first and only other time in history we have seen a strong bullish opening followed by a sharp bearish close was during the 2020 recovery from the Covid shock.

In both cases, the markets were rebounding from exogenous shocks.

That’s not where we are today. The index-level charts may look composed, but underneath plenty of individual stocks are trading as if they’ve already slipped into a private bear market of their own.

We’ll see how the day unfolds. It’s options-expiration Friday — the monthly opex ritual when traders roll positions forward, unwind old bets, and generally yank prices around like terriers with a chew toy.

Every major tech shift has followed a similar pattern. As information moves faster, the money follows.

The telegraph made news global and opened up a world of investment opportunities. Radio, and then television, ignited a new wave of prosperity for investors. And the internet made communication instant, creating fortunes for those who saw what was coming.

Now standards like x402 are doing the same for AI and digital payments, potentially putting Jamie Dimon’s empire in jeopardy.

If you have Coinbase building the payment rails, Circle handling settlement and projects like Worldcoin and Particle Network solving for identity and wallets — do you really need a bank to validate transactions and keep track of who owns what?

All of these companies are helping to build a new layer of fintech infrastructure. And they’re all working toward an economy that runs continuously, without the need for corporate scaffolding.