We had such a week that the entire world, from copper to gold, from oil to stocks, priced in the fear of not being able to grow. Everyone has seen that the money coming out of stocks went to bonds as a safe haven. Everyone has also seen the magnitude of the gold sale. But there is an important pricing that I think has been overlooked…

As you know, when you say growth, energy demand immediately knocks on the door. When you say growth, industrial companies, mining companies and the base metals they extract are highlighted and polished. If growth becomes problematic, the exact opposite happens. Although gold has fallen a lot, copper has fallen more ruthlessly, pulling the ratio down quite seriously. So why is this ratio important?

In its simplest terms, this ratio shows how much the market has priced in growth or contraction. Especially if you add the bond yield on top of this and both the ratio and the bond yield are down, it can be said that there is a serious fear of recession. This is exactly the kind of pricing that happened last week. While Trump and Bessent say that the effects of the implemented customs duty policies will have a positive effect on the economy, the market is pricing in the exact opposite.

In fact, the market is pricing in 4 rounds of interest rate cuts for the end of 2025. In other words, contrary to what central bankers and many analysts say, the interest rate cuts priced in are quite severe and unfortunately, the reason for this is not the decreasing inflation, but growth problems. The inflation increase caused by customs duties that central bankers are talking about is not even a clue. While the concern is this great, Trump's latest statement last weekend that there will be no concessions on customs duties hit the market like a fireball at the opening on Monday. This year, the famous "sell in May and go" event happened 1 month early.

In fact, if you look at it, it seems like 2025 will be one of those famous lost years. Because this time, very different dynamics are on the scene; Other countries that were caught unprepared in Trump 1.0 were prepared for what would happen this time and all the big ones are implementing counter-moves in their own way.

I don't know if everyone's imposition of additional trade taxes on the other side will do any good, instead of damaging trade and increasing prices. But if one day China and others do not replace the American bonds they hold with new ones as they mature and gradually move away from US bonds, who will lose out? The US, which is one of the most indebted countries in the world? Or any other major country you can think of?

From this perspective, the Trump government seems to me to be playing with fire and taking a gamble. If it loses this gamble, it seems like there will be an economic slowdown all over the world. If it wins, I think there will be another slowdown, but this time the recovery will be a little faster than the other alternative. Some things make you wish it had never happened...

The first quarter is not over yet, but on Monday, before the US session, we saw the third highest VIX value of the last 10 years at 60.13. So what will be the end of this? Will the VIX continue to rise or will it be okay? It is hard to know that much, my heart is in favor of okay here, but we will see. On the other hand, the highest open position in VIX is in options with a maturity of April 16. In other words, pricing is done in the near term and the process is not expected to continue in the long term – at least for now. In the near term, I see that options are concentrated at the 20 level with a size of $2.1 billion. The open put/call option ratio is 0.44 as of Monday afternoon, meaning there are 100 call options for every 44 put options. However, this ratio was 0.38 at Friday's close. In other words, VIX options are clearly starting to come back upwards. If pricing develops with this indicator, US stock indices will have recovered a bit by the time you read this article. Let's see, let's see.

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