Category Archives: stock market
Bull in the Swamp
When President Trump rides high so does the stock market. The Dow Bull has surged 2,700 points since his election.
Trump and Bull Get Swamped
But as allegations from unnamed sources rise in the media, President Trump sinks in the swamp. Apparently, so does the stock market. The Dow lost 373 points on Wednesday. The experts say investors worry that if Trump goes down so will his agenda for tax cuts, less regulation, and more growth.
Most experts that is. Wharton professor Jeremy Siegel, says the market could spike 1,000 points if Trump resigns.
Update: Well, as of noon Friday the Bull has clawed back over 200 points of Wednesday’s losses. Maybe I was just looking for an excuse to draw an alligator.
Trump’s Animal Spirits
James Fallows, in the October Atlantic, says Jane Goodall told him that Donald Trump reminds her of a chimp:
In many ways the performances of Donald Trump remind me of male chimpanzees and their dominance rituals,” Jane Goodall, the anthropologist, told me shortly before Trump won the GOP nomination. “In order to impress rivals, males seeking to rise in the dominance hierarchy perform spectacular displays: stamping, slapping the ground, dragging branches, throwing rocks. The more vigorous and imaginative the display, the faster the individual is likely to rise in the hierarchy, and the longer he is likely to maintain that position.”
Animal Spirits
The elite made a monkey of Trump before the election. But since then he’s released the stock market’s animal spirits. Oil and the dollar dig The Donald too.
Many 401-k investors are bullish because stocks have hit record highs. But Clinton Foundation investors – not so much.
Well, at least one Clinton supporter has done ok. Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway is up 8% since the election.
British Independence Day
It’s to the the “back of the queue” for the U.K., if President Obama is to be believed. The Brits ignored him and other experts and decided they’d had enough of the bureaucrats in Brussels.
EU commissions regulate everything from the bend of bananas to the curvature of cucumbers.
British Independence Day
Gerard Baker discussed Brexit in a WSJ front page analysis, Britain Fires a Shot Heard Round the World. He compared it to the populist movement that gave the Republican Party The Donald as presumptive nominee for president of the United States.
Tea Party Nation, a leading umbrella group, congratulated the British on their “Independence Day” and said in a statement “the land that gave us Magna Carta decided they wanted freedom and not a socialist dictatorship.”
Megan McArdle in Bloomberg had this to say about global elites and populist movements:
In many ways, members of the global professional class have started to identify more with each other than they have with the fellow residents of their own countries. Witness the emotional meltdown many American journalists have been having over Brexit.
Journalists aren’t the only one’s melting down over Brexit. The Dow and the British Pound celebrated “the freedom from socialist dictatorship” by plunging 600 points and 11% respectively.
Business Boat People
Business boat people are fleeing America for lower tax countries. President Obama ordered another change in the law to make them stay put. The U.S. has one of the world’s highest corporate tax rates.
