The Australian share market has fallen to its lowest level in six months, while Elon Musk’s foray into politics has contributed to Tesla’s share price dropping 45 per cent from its record high. Investor sentiment has taken a major hit from US President Donald Trump’s sudden shifts in trade policy, while his creation of a ‘strategic bitcoin reserve’ led to a sharp rise and fall in the price of cryptocurrencies.
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00:00Well, Donald Trump's policy announcements are kind of like turning on and turning off
00:05a light switch.
00:07The US president now wants to delay his 25% tariffs on most Mexican goods and some Canadian
00:12imports for about a month.
00:14And that's on top of yesterday's decision to give carmakers a one-month exemption from
00:18those tariffs.
00:19But investors are just over it.
00:21All that uncertainty and the constant backflipping, that led to the local share market falling
00:26by a pretty steep 1.8% today, with tech, banking and health care among the worst performing
00:32stocks.
00:33And when you zoom out, you can see the ASX is now at its lowest level in six months.
00:38Overseas, things were looking pretty ugly for Wall Street and the FTSE as well, though
00:42Chinese markets bucked the trend.
00:44Now, you can really see the pessimism on Wall Street's tech index.
00:49The Nasdaq is down 10% from its record high, so it's officially a correction.
00:53But that's nothing compared to Tesla, which has lost half its value in three months.
00:58Its EV sales have been falling quite sharply these past few months in Australia, Europe
01:03and even California, where its headquarters used to be.
01:06Although Elon Musk's tilt towards right-wing politics has cost him billions, don't worry,
01:11he's doing all right.
01:13Meanwhile, gold is down slightly, oil prices are near a three-year low and the Aussie dollar
01:18has slipped to 63 US cents.
01:21But it's nothing quite as dramatic as Bitcoin.
01:23The original cryptocurrency jumped when President Trump signed an executive order to create
01:28a strategic Bitcoin reserve.
01:30But it quickly fell again when people found out this reserve would be funded exclusively
01:34by Bitcoin that US authorities have already seized from criminals.
01:38So it seems taxpayers won't be footing the bill.
01:42And that's finance.