Scott Bessent’s ascendance is the salve for a shaky US stock market

For traders, it’s important to know who has the president’s ear.

Personnel is policy, or so the old saying goes, and the various officials swirling around the Oval Office have different preferences on the best measures to take for the US economy. It’s something that bears close watching as some of the administration’s harsher stances on trade and monetary policy were softened, at least rhetorically, on Tuesday.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the April 9 announcement from President Trump to water down reciprocal tariffs on most nations was in part spurred by a window of opportunity: noted trade hawk Peter Navarro wasn’t around to dissuade the president.

Neil Dutta, head of US economics at Renaissance Macro Research, took this a step further in a morning note to clients, breaking down how the S&P 500 has performed on days when Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent (a hedge fund chief in his previous life) is mentioned more in news articles than Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick or Navarro.

His findings:

“Since the beginning of March, the S&P 500 has shed a total of 719 points on days Howard Lutnick and Peter Navarro have been the biggest story. By contrast, if Bessent has been the biggest story on the day, the S&P 500 has advanced a total of 52 points. So, Bessent is good for about 1ppt up on the S&P500. By contrast, the others are a drag of about 13.5ppt. Trump’s recent comments around Powell, his soothing words around China, all tell you that Trump is starting to ‘feel the market.’ I’m not sure how long it lasts or when it stops (probably until the next bad hard data point), but it is welcome.”