stocks and economic forecasting

Historically the stock market has been the most reliable of the leading indicators of future US economy performance, turning up and down roughly six months ahead of domestic economic data.

The three main factors I see in making this so are:

–stock buyers have traditionally tried to look forward to anticipate future earnings performance, while the bond market has been more focused on the here and now;

–as financial instruments, stocks are sensitive to changes in Fed policy aimed at either accelerating or reining in the economy

–until the financial crisis, legions of veteran securities analysts collected and processed economic information that began to be factored into stock prices long before the data became public knowledge.

It’s not clear to me that this continues to be true, given that veteran researchers have all but disappeared on Wall Street, and that the characteristics of their AI replacements aren’t well know.

With that caveat, now that I’m trapped in the house and am trying to avoid compiling a bibliography for my thesis paper, however, I’m finding time to fool around with numbers and to blog.

stocks under Trump

Since the 2016 election (the numbers since inauguration are lower), the NASDAQ index is up by about 40%.

The S&P 500 has gained 35%+.

The Russell 2000, which is much more representative of domestic US businesses, is down by about 10%.

As a citizen, I think that the Russell 2000 wants better schools, better infrastructure and retraining for workers displaced by technological shifts.  Stock prices seem to indicate not enough of that is happening.