James McIntosh

So we saw a chunky but not outrageous fall in stock futures yesterday, and we saw another chunky but not outrageous fall in stock futures overnight.

But when you put those together, we're probably going to see a very large drop in US stocks this morning because the market was closed yesterday.

One is that last year we had this major trade war.

Stocks did really well.

Volatility didn't really go up.

The economy was fine.

Corporate investment actually went up.

These are things that are not what you'd expect from a major trade war.

Of course, it's also possible that investors just think there's a decent chance that Trump is bluffing or that even if he's not bluffing, he doesn't have the power to push through with this.

Quite a lot of Congress is not supportive of the idea of taking Greenland and his tariffs might end up being ruled illegal.

And of course, if they are, then all of this goes away, at least temporarily.

And then, of course, one of the reasons that stocks did well last year is that Europe is planning to spend vast amounts of money on its military, which is very, very good for European defence stocks.

I guess the worst case is that the US actually invades.

Now, at the moment, that's not on the cards.

President Trump says he wants to buy it.

But if the US started sending troops there, that would be an absolute sort of end of NATO moment.

And investors would suddenly have to wake up and say, this is what we need to address.

This is what we need to be thinking about.