Wall Street has done it again, and this time the joke cuts deeper than a soft taco. What began as traders' gallows humour about a tariff‑happy president has turned into a running code for how seriously markets take Donald Trump's word.
Less than a year after traders coined 'TACO', 'Trump Always Chickens Out', to mock the president's habitual tariff retreats, financial markets have produced a sequel. The label that has reportedly emerged in trading circles is 'NACHO', and the scepticism of the president's ability to reopen the Strait of Hormuz is now such a fixture that it merits its own code name. Bloomberg's Javier Blas put it plainly on 29 April 2026: 'We thought we were getting a TACO, Trump Always Chickens Out. But so far we are getting a NACHO: Not A Chance Hormuz Opens.'
The acronym is not merely a punchline. It is a market verdict, delivered with the particular brutality that trading floors reserve for leaders who miscalculate the cost of a bluff.
From TACO to NACHO: The Making of a Wall Street Tradition
The lineage of these food‑themed jabs traces back to 2 May 2025, when Financial Times columnist Robert Armstrong first coined 'TACO' in his popular 'Unhedged' newsletter. Armstrong wrote that markets were realising 'the US administration does not have a very high tolerance for market and economic pressure, and will be quick to back off when tariffs cause pain,' calling it 'the TACO theory: Trump Always Chickens Out.'
Investors engaged in 'TACO trades' by buying stocks at lower cost after Trump announced new tariffs or increased them, then reaping the benefits when markets rebounded as he delayed or backed off from them. The strategy, it turned out, was remarkably reliable. By 2026, TACO had expanded beyond tariff policy to describe Trump's reversals on Greenland, his failed threats to sanction Russia over Ukraine, and his attempts to find an exit from the escalating Iran war.
Trump did not take kindly to the original acronym. According to CNN, Trump had not yet heard the term when CNBC correspondent Megan Cassella raised it with him on 28 May 2025 during a White House ceremony. He first understood that she was calling him a chicken. He called the question a 'nasty question', insisting: 'It's called negotiation.' A senior White House official acknowledged to CNN that the president was caught off guard and 'reasonably' frustrated, and that Trump later vented to his team following the exchange.
We thought we were getting a TACO
— Javier Blas (@JavierBlas) April 29, 2026
"Trump Always Chickens Out"
But so far we are getting a NACHO
"Not A Chance Hormuz Opens"
(With appreciation to the trader who told me)
The Strait That Refuses to Open
With NACHO, the stakes are altogether different. The Strait of Hormuz is not a tariff lever that can be reset overnight. The International Energy Agency has characterised the closure as 'the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market', with its Executive Director calling it 'the greatest global energy security challenge in history'.
Brent crude surpassed $100 per barrel on 8 March 2026 for the first time in four years, rising to $126 per barrel at its peak, with the largest ever monthly increase in oil prices recorded in March 2026. The US Energy Information Administration reported that the Brent crude oil spot price averaged $103 per barrel in March, £81 ($103) per barrel, a full $32 higher than the February average, with daily prices reaching nearly $128 per barrel on 2 April 2026.
The World Bank's April 2026 Commodity Markets Outlook projects a 24% rise in energy prices for the year, the first annual increase in commodity prices since 2022, driven by the near‑total closure of the Strait, which carries roughly 35% of global seaborne crude oil and 20% of global LNG trade. The strait's near‑total closure has not only strangled oil supply. The disruption has also hit aluminium, fertiliser, and helium markets, while roughly one‑third of global helium production has been affected, with distributors rationing deliveries as of early April.
Trump's response to the impasse has done little to reassure markets. The frustrated president has gyrated between claiming that Tehran is begging him to end the blockade of their ports and issuing outbursts threatening further strikes if Hormuz is not reopened. On the morning of 29 April, he posted an AI‑generated image of himself armed with a gun in front of an exploding hillside, warning Iran to 'get smart soon' as attempts to restart negotiations appeared to stall.
The situation has been described as a 'dual blockade', with the US Navy blockading Iranian ports and Iran in turn blockading Gulf shipping, after peace talks between the US and Iran formally collapsed on 12 April when Vice President JD Vance announced the failure of negotiations.
A Market Joke With Real-World Consequences
The pivot from TACO to NACHO marks a notable shift in how traders read Trump's authority. TACO was, at its core, profitable optimism, a wager that things would not be as bad as threatened. NACHO carries no such comfort. It encodes the belief that the Strait will remain shut, that prices will remain high, and that no presidential bluster will change that fact any time soon.
University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers told Barron's: 'Under no previous presidency did we have active markets betting on the president's resolve. There was no BACO trade, no CACO trade, nothing. It was always taken as a given that when the president spoke on Monday, he would likely still mean it on Tuesday. That's no longer true.'
Some traders have already begun extending the food metaphor further. One response to Blas's post on X proposed a third acronym, 'FAJITAS': 'Failure At Jostling Iran Towards A Settlement.' Another suggested the whole situation could simply be called 'the whole enchilada.'
The White House did not respond to requests for comment on the NACHO acronym, according to HuffPost. Given Trump's volcanic reaction to TACO, the silence may itself be the loudest signal of all.
In the end, Wall Street has found that the most devastating financial commentary does not require a press release, just a well‑timed acronym and a closed strait.
