Episode summary
How to Invest During a Trump Presidency | Trillions
Trillions
· · Hosts: Eric Balchunas, Joel Weber · Guests: Athanasios Psarofagis
Summary
The episode argues that investing under a Trump presidency has been less about predicting policy than about ignoring noise and watching how the market actually reacts. Athanasios Psarofagis says Trump-era markets have delivered strong returns, with stocks up 80% in Trump 1.0 and about 25% in Trump 2.0, but with more abrupt swings and shorter-lived selloffs than investors are used to. The hosts use his ETF research to show that the market’s rhythm changes: March is unusually weak, April is unusually strong, and summers have been resilient, while Thursday tends to be the weakest day of the week.
Psarofagis also argues that a lot of the action is driven by trading behavior rather than fundamentals. He points to higher volatility overnight, heavier de-risking before weekends, and a growing share of ETF volume tied to headlines, algorithms, and rapid repricing around Trump comments. He says the broad lesson is not to overtrade the chaos; the best move is often to stay invested, because the “freakouts” have frequently reversed. The episode closes on a more tactical idea: buying what the government is visibly supporting, such as Intel, MP Materials, Lithium Americas and other names tied to stakes or policy backing, has worked better than fighting those flows.
Key takeaways
- Psarofagis says Trump 1.0 delivered an 80% stock gain and Trump 2.0 is up about 25%, but with more violent and shorter-lived swings.
- His seasonal data show March is unusually weak under Trump, while April and the summer months have tended to be strong.
- Thursday stands out as the worst day of the week under Trump, which Psarofagis links to traders de-risking ahead of the weekend.
- He argues that overnight holding has outperformed intraday holding, in part because Trump-related news can hit markets outside regular hours.
- Psarofagis says ETF trading volumes are being amplified by algos and headline-driven reactions, making “freakouts” more frequent.
- His final rule of thumb is to follow, not fight, government-backed names and policy-linked tickers when they are obvious enough to see.
Notable quotes
“under Trump, things are like really bad for a minute and then they go up back up again”
“March is really bad. And normally the market's up in March”
“the bigger takeaway is that there is a it's quick like when things seem to happen under Trump, they're very quick”
“Don't hold the market during market hours. Don't hold the S&P which is ridiculous, right”
How the episode opens
Welcome to Trillions. I'm Joel Weber. — And I'm Eric Belchunis. Eric, I started to see this flurry of research notes from Bloomberg Intelligence. And one or two I was like, "Oh, that's kind of interesting." And then all of a sudden it was like, "Wait a second. There's like something to this that I think warrants an episode of trillions." And most of it ha happened to be coming from Athanosio Saraphagus on the BI team. What has he been writing about?
Yeah. So Aanosios, you know that like on sometimes on ESPN when they'll tell you like, hey, you know, the Detroit Tigers are actually like 0 and three when it's raining at night on a Tuesday afternoon. Yeah. Like — Much valued research insights right there.
Yeah. I didn't know I needed that, but that is interesting. That's Aan for our team and he's always unearthing these really interesting data points and a lot of them have to do with how the markets are behaving under a Trump regime.
I mean it is a unique situation. I think everybody who's gone through it realizes it seems like there's a lot of chaos. Every other day the sky is falling and the media is just goes bananas and a lot of times they're very negative.
It's like oh my god it's finally the markets are going to crash finally. um things are bad and then it it isn't. I mean I have the numbers here in Trump 1.0 stocks went up 80% during that four years.
That's a 16% annualized return. So that's a little better than average. Average is like 10.
And in Trump 2.0 stocks are up 25%. But and that's 16% annualized. So you gotten 16% annualized return.
However, what you've had to have done is just sort of ignore a couple really extreme situations and a more twitchy market.
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- trump presidency
- etf data
- market uncertainty
- tariffs and geopolitics
- stock market performance
Companies and tickers mentioned
- Bloomberg Intelligence
Watch the episode
Watch “How to Invest During a Trump Presidency | Trillions” on YouTube
Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
More from Trillions
-
Quit Your Job, Live Off an ETF? | Trillions -
Godzilla vs. King Kong, Degen Dip-Buyers and Anthropic | Trillions -
The ETF Graveyard: This Has Been a Record Year for Closures | Trillions -
New ETFs to Watch: A $2.5 Billion Launch, Anthropic and S&P 10,000, Anyone? | Trillions -
Wall Street’s Plan to Make Sports an Investable Asset | Trillions -
Can Corgi Become the Walmart of ETFs? | Trillions
Trillions, this episode and its artwork belong to Bloomberg. Octagon is not affiliated with the show; this page is an independent summary.
