Investors facing tariff turmoil: ‘It’s fastest finger first’

As a former champion runner, Richard McDonald can move quickly.

But the speed of the market falls, triggered by the sweeping global tariffs Donald Trump announced last week, still kept him on his toes.

Previously a trader for Credit Suisse, he now buys and sells stocks privately. At his laptop in London last week, he watched as the president unveiled a poster board outlining tariff rates, some as high as 50%, for imports from countries around the world.

He raced to understand which companies might be worst hit. Then he sold.

“There are billions being wiped off share prices every second, so it’s really ‘fastest finger first’,” he said. “My mind was sprinting.”

In 25 years of trading, he said he had rarely experienced anything like it.

Trillions were wiped off the value of financial markets around the world in the aftermath of Trump’s “Liberation Day” announcement.

Leading…