If anyone knows when the stock market is going to head in the other direction, please enlighten me in the Comments.
On second thought, send me a private message. It's not enough that I should prosper. Everyone else must drown in the sea.
Ordered some bagels for lunch as there is a bagel shop two blocks away. Although the online app allowed me to order my daughters' favorite kind—cinnamon sugar, the sweetest possible option—when I showed up I was told they didn't have any left. So I switched to plain, and the fellow handed me a 10-dollar bill with the bagels & cream cheese! I saw him with my bag knocking around on the cash register and thought I was going to have to explain that I'd paid online (for my preferred flavor). But he said he felt bad about being out of cinnamon sugar.
I've been skeptical, or cynical, about all the upbeat conclusions regarding awful 2020 finally being done and better times coming—as if fortune and the coronavirus gave two shits about our calendars and the position of the Earth on its trip 'round the sun. But free bagels for New Year's lunch! An encouraging omen.
Speaking of the stock market, I see that Trump is crowing about it being at a record high on his watch. Was Herbert Hoover perhaps the last president who could not make the same boast? I remember Trump taking credit for the stock market rising in the period between his election and inauguration, so I checked to see what's happened this time. The Dow closed at 27,480 on November 3. Yesterday it closed at 30,606. It's up more than 11% since Trump was defeated. I'm not saying there's a causal relationship—just that, four years ago, Trump said a rise in the corresponding period was caused by his victory.
In trying to verify my surmise re Hoover, I see it's probably incorrect. Going back a hundred years, four presidents have overseen a decline in the Dow during their time in office: Nixon, Carter, and George W Bush, in addition to Hoover. The presidents presiding over the four sharpest rises were Coolidge, FDR, Clinton, and Obama.
It's become almost a cliche to say that "the stock market isn't the economy." In one respect, though, it seems representative: in the stock market, as everywhere else, a very few are striking it rich while everyone else treads water or drowns. For example, in 2020 the S&P 500 rose 16.71%. But the top 24 issues accounted for essentially all the rise. Take them out, so that the index is made of the remaining 476 issues, and the return turns negative for the year (down about a tenth of 1 percent).
In non financial news, today's New York Times has an article, "Trump's Focus as the Pandemic Raged: What Would It Mean for Him?" Read it and then debate with yourself the detail possessing the largest outrageous plus pitiful sum. For me, I think the winner is:
The debates inside the White House increasingly revolved around Dr Atlas, who had no formal training in infectious diseases but whose views—which Mr Trump saw him deliver on Fox News—appealed to the president's belief that the crisis was overblown.
His arrival at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue was itself something of a mystery. Some aides said he was discovered by Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary. Others said John McAntee, the president's personnel chief, had been Googling for a Trump-friendly doctor who would be loyal.
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