Billionaire's Portfolio

June 27, 5:00 pm EST

We’ve talked about the case for a shakeout in Amazon. It was up big today on news that it would be buying a big online pharmacy.

That worked to curtail the slide in the stock (for now).  But it only exacerbates the building regulatory scrutiny and the President’s wrath against Amazon’s developing monopoly and power (much of which has been garnered overtime from the unfair advantages Amazon has enjoyed from operating as an internet company).

If there’s one thing we know about Trump as a President, he’s done what he says he’s going to do.  And he’s had plenty of verbal threats directed squarely at Amazon.  We can only assume that he will carry out the offensive he’s been promising — against a company that has crushed industries by price wars.

On a similar note, let’s talk about China.  As we’ve discussed quite a bit, China’s rapid economic ascent in the world came through currency manipulation.  They held their currency down, to underprice the world on exports.  And as the world stood by and watched (and bought lots of stuff from them), they became the world’s second largest economy, and the accumulated the largest war chest of foreign currency reserves.

China is to the world, as Amazon is to corporate America.  And Trump is attempting to deal with them both head on.

Interestingly, China is quietly fighting back, via the currency.  The go to tool in China is currency devaluation.

That’s what they’ve been doing over the past three months.  And that has accelerated in just the past 10 days – they’ve devalued by almost 4% against the dollar.  This is something to watch closely.  A big one-off devaluation out of China would be a geopolitical cage rattling.