The Flickering Market

... or: What the Fall of Stocks Reveals About Ourselves.

There are days like this when the state of the world is not reflected in speeches but in stock charts. Not in programs but in percentage points. The United States is staggering not only politically but economically – and its stock markets are the seismograph of a truth that affects everyone, yet is fully understood by no one: We have outsourced our fate – to markets, to algorithms, to a hope that does not speak but calculates.

On Tuesday, the S&P 500 fell again, along with the Dow Jones and the Nasdaq. A movement that feels routine – yet it is the expression of a deep unease. The AI euphoria that has buoyed Wall Street in recent months is losing its shine. Companies like Palantir, whose stock price had quintupled in a year, are tumbling despite strong numbers. Why? Because the promise alone is no longer enough. Because an algorithm offers no guarantees – only projections.

And above all of it: the new uncertainty, the old signature – Donald Trump's tariffs, arbitrary, erratic, geopolitically blind and economically explosive. They are pushing companies to withdraw their profit forecasts. Clorox? Weaker revenue. Mattel? Paused planning. Ford? A $1.5 billion loss, no full-year forecast. Archer Daniels Midland? A 31% drop in profits. And all this not because the world is ending – but because no one knows whether it will tomorrow.

The global economy has become a bird that flutters only because its direction has been taken from it. And man – this Homo Economicus, this consumer, this investor – is a creature that invests in fear.

One might think this is just a corporate problem. But it has long since entered our living rooms. Into purchasing decisions. Into holiday plans. Into retirement projections. American households, analysts say, are more pessimistic than ever. Because no one can say whether Trump will impose new tariffs next week – or revoke them. Whether a trade war is being fought – or merely simulated. Whether anything can be relied upon – or whether it's safer to do nothing.

Markets are no longer a reflection of the real economy. They are its premonition, its caricature, its fever dream. And we live in them – with our life insurance, our pension funds, our expectations.

Trade, which had only just begun to recover, is stumbling again. The US trade deficit rose to a record high in March – not because of strength, but out of fear. Panic buying ahead of tariffs that took effect in April and others looming in July. The economy, economists say, shrank by 0.3% in the first quarter – not because nothing was produced, but because too much was stockpiled. Out of fear. Out of uncertainty.

Ford, Clorox, Mattel, DoorDash – they are all symptoms. What they say is always the same: "We don’t know what’s coming." And what they do is also the same: They stop, they pause, they warn.
Und was sie tun, ist ebenfalls gleich: Sie stoppen, sie pausieren, sie warnen.

Trump's policy is not a strategy but a mood. A movement without direction. And the economy reacts like a living organism that has lost its heartbeat. The Fed remains calm, perhaps too calm. Rate cuts are being discussed, but is it too early – or too late? The truth is: There is no "right moment" anymore. Only the hope that one might come.

"We live in a dream whose dreamer no longer remembers what he wanted." And perhaps that is the market: a dreamer whose trust has been broken.

Because what is a market other than a mirror of our collective expectations? And what are expectations but politics in emotional form? When Trump blankets the world with tariffs, it is not only the trade balance that trembles – it is the very idea of reliability itself.

You can read it in the markets. Not in a crash, but in the slow, indecisive sinking. Not in collapse, but in the loss of direction. Palantir falls, even though it delivers. Clorox falls, even though it produces. Ford falls, because it foresees. And we all lose – because we no longer know what to believe in.

And so, at the end of this day, what remains is not just a falling curve, but a question: What happens to a democracy whose nervous system listens to stock prices in real time – but no longer to reason?