What's moving markets today: Live updates - CNN

Hurray, markets look like they'll open higher! Last week was the best week for blue-chips all year! The Dow was up five days in a row, Yippee!

Not so fast. We just lived through a week of the upside-down logic of Wall Street where bad news is actually good news.

The bad news: The president’s trade experiments seem disconnected and unpredictable. A weak US jobs report suggests a potential turning point in business confidence in May, which is the very month investors began to believe the president’s trade war with China was not temporary at all.

All the gloom has investors betting the Federal Reserve might have to backstop the US economy with a rate cut later this summer or later this year.

Anyone who has been investing for the past decade knows Wall Street loves cheap money and stock investors love the idea the Fed Chief Jay Powell will be the shock absorber for the president’s trade shocks.

But be careful what you wish for: When the Fed cuts rates, it’s usually for a bad reason. A weakening economy. A financial crisis. And usually, when the Fed cuts rates, it begins cutting them from levels a lot higher than where we are today. It doesn’t give policymakers much room to maneuver.

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