KEY POINTS
- Defense stocks dropped sharply Thursday afternoon after President Donald Trump suggested the U.S. could massively cut defense spending.
- Trump has sent mixed messages on military spending throughout his 2024 campaign and in the early days of his presidency.
Why would defence have a “stock”
Defense contractors are mostly publicly traded companies. Raytheon, Lockheed, Boeing etc.
Seems like a lot of trust is put onto the “free market” forces
As opposed to having the government directly design planes and ships and stuff? Even in ‘communist’ countries such as Russia and China, they have companies that compete for business. Remember that essentially all the billions spent with these defense contractors is employing and producing products here as opposed to overseas.
Please keep fucking with the defense contractors, surely they won’t take any drastic measures against you
I had the “wait, a good thing?” reaction too.
But thinking about potential underlying motivations, it makes complete sense that the compromised traitor holding the reins would want to weaken the military at the same time as destroying the government.
Or maybe it isn’t to help other dictators, and he just wants the opportunity to weed out more people who are loyal to the constitution.
This may signal he is getting pushback from the military which is a very good thing. If he is serious about Canada and Greenland he will need a strong military. It makes no sense to start cutting the budget now.
Refusing unlawful orders is always cool and moral.
It doesn’t need to be halved. They just need to figure out where a large portion of the money goes, since they can’t seem to account for it.
If he actually halves Pentagon Spending, that would be… the first good deed he’s ever done.
He never will. He sent a message for weapon manufacturer CEOs to chip in, and off course they will gladlyl buy him just like how silicon techies did
Exactly, this is just fishing for a bribe, just like the tariffs. Bribe Trump enough and your program or industry will get a loop hole or passed over for 6 months or whatever.
I can see him doing away with seasonal clock shifts by accident at some point.
In case y’all forgot Trump’s last term, his general pattern is to constantly announce insane plans and only follow through on a fraction of them. Cutting the pentagon’s budget in half is one of the distractions. Some General will dandy himself up in his class A and jingle some blueprints for a useless wunderwaffe and the defense budget will go up.
I don’t like it when I agree with the general notion of something Trump says or does. Makes me feel dirty.
Wait until you see how i gets halved. Im willing to bet they axe the VA, any scholastic programs, ROTC et al as most policies are about destroying America.
Thats the magic of trump though, when he’s vague about things he can sometimes spin them as something agreeable. My guess is he’ll keep the regime change bullshit and nix stuff like burn pit procedures, ukraine support, and veterans benefits
Broken clocks. If its any consolation he could be, variously-
- Floating random shit. Common Trump talk.
- Actually wanting to weaken the U.S. militarily, to the benefit of his leash holders.
- Fishing for bribes.
3 is my guess. Look at tiktok
He’ll direct the savings to creating a new internal police force.
Good time to buy then. He already pledged to increase funding to Israel. Just need to research what company supplies the most weapons for them and invest there.
HAHAHAHAHHAHA
This fuckin timeline, man…
Well, couldn’t the M1 Abrams be replaced with cheaper Tesla cybertrucks?
“Sir, half of our swastitanks have burned to the ground.”
“Who attacked them?”
“Attacked?”
It just rained sir.
Realistically speaking… Is anything gonna happen?
Fuckers are just gonna invest as always, capitalism knows no morals.
I just don’t even know how I’d react if he successfully cut the defense budget in half. Would i have to join MAGA at that point?
Because… yeah, I hate everything he’s done or let others do so far. His Cabinet is/ will be a nightmare. I assume this defense cut would come with more egregious tax cuts for the billionaire class.
But cutting that much from our stupid war budget … man that’s such a nice thing to get…
Who’s to bet a load of shares get bought up, then suddenly this announcement is rescinded?
Playing the market based on the insanity dripping out of this guy daily, not a bad plan. If only there was some actual rhyme and reason to what he does.
The market manipulation is the rhyme and reason.
You give Trump’s dementia-addled ramblings far too much credit.
He’s just the puppet at this point.
I was already going hard on AI stock, then day of inauguration when he sent the clear message of where tech companies stand in running this country I dumped ALL investment money into AI stock. If I have to live in this hellscape I better at least get to retire in it.
My brother, have you heard about the benefits of diversification? If you want to retire at all, don’t put all your eggs in one basket.
If I invested in eggs I wouldn’t be in this mess!
Everybody was panic buying ! Those stocks were fast as lightning!
In fact the buying was a little bit frightening.
But AI had expert timing.
Everybody was kung fu fighting.
dude, if you don’t have anything to contribute just don’t type
Dude… WHOOOSH!
No I got it, the song.
The thing is the first two posters changed the lyrics to fit the topic.
You just typed the lyrics to the actual song.
Since the entire thing is contingent on China and Russia agreeing to half their defence budget too, the only thing to bet on is when it will be rescinded.
I bought lockheed martin call options after the way the steel markets rebounded
Edit: just checked volume on LMT. 2.4M today vs an average of 1.35M. Yeeeeeeah. Lot more buyers than usual today
Yay for incredibly immoral investments. It’s disgusting how stock trading has been gamified and divorced from what it actually is, owning and supporting a company.
Work it baby, work it. Insider trading on steroids, or rather Adderall.
Yooo sick
If he actually tried to follow through, there would actually probably be a military coup.
In America.