Does the surge in the stock markets affect your opinion of President Trump?
Do you have investments that have appreciated since he took office? The NASDAQ composite fund in my IRA is up more than 45 percent since 1/20/17. Am I allowed to be happy about that?
To the first question, no, it changes nothing. Trump, the man, remains a deeply despicable human being regardless of the market’s performance.
To your second query, I personally have many investments that have benefitted from the bull market, but not all of my portfolio rests in stocks. I’ve seen great growth in real estate and other funds as well.
You should absolutely be happy about your IRA‘s growing value. Mind it well. But you’d be deceiving yourself to believe Trump is to credit for it all.
The current record market expansion, as you may know, began out of the ashes of the Bush debacle, in March 2009. Trump’s only been in office 19 months of that now 9 1/2 yr winning streak. He boarded a steaming train and, IMHO, has only managed to not derail it. Yet. My hope is his financial policies can help to buttress the market against major downturns.
This post was edited by Don Barzini at August 30, 2018 11:08 PM MDT
My family's modest holdings in Brooklyn rental property have also done well, although that has happened under every president since my parents purchased their first brownstone in 1963 during the JFK administration.
There really is no way to quantify how much or little President Trump has to do with it. But historically, markets have responded positively to tax cuts, especially for businesses. Many people will draw relatively baseless conclusions, positive and negative, grounded in their existing biases.
This post was edited by Stu Spelling Bee at September 1, 2018 7:25 PM MDT
Many of those people are economists. Seems every self-proclaimed economist within shouting distance of a news source credits something different for this or that market fluctuation. I suspect some of them know really what they are talking about.
What we know is that a multitude of forces effect our financial markets, from within AND without. This is why it is wise to diversify our investments. I am not so naive as to consider Trump’s presence as the genesis of my dividends, nor I suspect, are you.
The government has the power of taxation. That's essentially compensatory power, the only power it needs to affect markets and the economy. If you're unfamiliar with the term compensatory power, consult "The Anatomy of Power" by John Kenneth Galbraith.
I think there are far more powerful events and trends which affect rises and falls on stock exchanges than taxes.
Some of the biggies: The sub-prime mortgage scandal that caused the 1998 GFC. The Black Monday crash of October 19, 1987, due to the introduction of automated buy and sell orders based on computed trends. The Wall Street Crash of 1929 which triggered the Great Depression - due to too many investors relying on highly leveraged debt.
I could find no research papers or media that attributed any significant change in markets to rises or falls of taxes.
These days all big businesses on the stock exchange avoid paying most of their legitimate taxes by using off-shore tax havens and complex accountancy to hide their real earnings.
This post was edited by inky at September 1, 2018 1:46 AM MDT
Seriously, you must never have studied finance or even basic economics in school to make such a statement. Here are some links to help you learn that both tax rates (tax policy) and interest rates (the Federal Reserve and monetary policy) can affect capital markets:
Meanwhile real wages have stagnated since 2014, the reawakening scourge of inflation eats away at the value of those dollars and the gap between the haves and have-nots grows ever wider. Pull your nose out of your portfolio and observe the grinding poverty of those who CREATED your wealth.
And what solution do you suggest? Also, why do you assume that anyone who's made a little money in the market isn't aware of the larger economy? Try not to jump to so many conclusions with so little information.
Don Barzini 