Wall Street Investors Mock Trump With A Brutal 4-Letter Code Word

Wall Street investors have cooked up a new term for betting against President Donald Trump ― and some have used it to score big gains at a time when the markets are behaving erratically due to the president’s on-again, off-again tariffs.

It’s called “TACO,” which is code for “Trump Always Chickens Out,” and it refers to the president’s tendency to announce massive tariffs, causing the markets to plunge, only to back off days later, causing them to rise again.

Most credit Financial Times commentator Robert Armstrong for coining the term.

The New York Times noted that it happened again in recent days, with Trump’s announcement of 50% tariffs on Europe causing major indexes to sink on Friday.

But on Sunday he announced that he would delay those tariffs amid a new round of trade talks ― leading to major gains when the markets reopened on Tuesday.

Ted Jenkin, president of Exit Stage Left Advisors, told the New York Post there’s now a simple strategy on Wall Street based on those shifts.

“Once he delivers bad news, investors are buying those stocks when they are beaten down waiting for him to chicken out and watching those stocks rebound in value,” he explained.

Analysts said the situation is unique to Trump.

“Under no previous presidency did we have active markets betting on the president’s resolve,” University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers told Barron’s. “There was no BACO trade, no CACO trade, nothing. It was always taken as a given that when the president spoke on Monday, he would likely still mean it on Tuesday. That’s no longer true. But what’s really hard is that it’s not even obvious when it’ll be true, and when it won’t be. Madness.”

Armstrong, the writer who coined the term, had his own tongue-in-cheek takeaway.

“Acronyms are very powerful, especially when they remind people of foodstuffs,” he said on the “Unhedged” podcast. “That is what I’ve learned from this experience.”