The Financial Post reports in its Tuesday edition that U.S. President Donald Trump's mercurial approach to his signature tariffs whipsawed markets last week. A Bloomberg dispatch to the Post says that investors trying to position their equity portfolios to manage this uncertainty are finding the playbook from his first term offers little help. What has not changed is Mr. Trump's strategy of pledging aggressive levies on trading partners and then quickly backtracking. What has changed is basically everything else. For starters, the tariffs he has proposed are going to impact a wider range of goods than during his first term. More importantly, volatility is higher. The S&P 500 Index is on a red-hot winning streak, rising 53 per cent combined in 2023 and 2024 and pushing valuations to lofty bull market levels. We are in an environment of really high expectations in the third year of a bull market. When you have any form of fragility, any catalyst can upset markets. Exposure to equity futures is currently above the 40th percentile, according to JPMorgan. In 2017, it was below the 10th percentile. This means investors now have less dry powder to buy equities in the months ahead than the first time Mr. Trump took office.