Market Gives Up Trump-Tax-Hope Gains After UBS Says “Tax Reform Won’t Happen”

Well that de-escalated quickly…
Following yesterday’s breathless rip higher in small cap stocks (which are down today) and ‘high-tax’ stock outperformance (which is collapsing today), it appears ‘sell the news’ is more today’s meme as many on Wall Street question the chances of getting a bill through… and what its effect would be.
As UBS’ Seth Carpenter wrote overnight: “We don’t believe that tax reform or even sizable tax cuts will happen. Even if a tax cut of 1 percent of GDP somehow happens, it is not a game changer.”
Larger tax cuts than we anticipate are likely the single, most-easily identifiable upside risk to our forecast. Our baseline forecast incorporates no fiscal stimulus in 2017. For 2018, we have incorporated only modest corporate and personal tax cuts. Even with the new tax proposal from the Administration, our outlook remains unchanged. We are sceptical that a large fiscal stimulus package that increases the deficit will occur. There has not been substantial legislation passed so far this year, despite control of the Congress and the White House by a single party. Moreover, the fiscally conservative wing of the Congress will have to confront another vote to raise the debt limit next year in the context of any decision made about fiscal policy.

This post was published at Zero Hedge on Sep 28, 2017.