WHY the hell would the DOW be up so much after Moore loses and the Fed is primed to raise rates?! * The seasonal influence in effect - this time of year is when the market historically tacks on its largest gains. * There is no training, classroom or otherwise, that can prepare for trading the last third of a move, whether it's the end of a bull market or the end of a bear market. Paul Tudor Jones https://seekingalpha.com/article/1183461-seasonal-patterns-in-stock-markets-319-years-of-evidence
These are great points. The market is always concerned with government agenda & intervention. The Trump administration poses little threat in this area and has so far proved ineffective when they try to intervene with anything. So it's like a win/ win for the market. The biggest agenda for the Trump admin is to look good on TV.
I think Republicans are planning to drive this through within 10 days... before the new Senator enters office in January.
Some thoughts... -- Since this current [SPX] upswing can be broadly traced to Jan/Feb 2016, it's pretty hard for rational people to term it a "Trump Rally". -- "Divided Government" most certainly produces happier markets, going back (empirically) a couple of generations. (Since I'm a nerd: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Frey ) -- By not having the 'Bama pajama-ram-a in office, the Republicans have defanged a large Democrat cause. (And its associated distraction.) -- BUT THE BIG THING (IMNSHO), was the comment on USDollarIndex: we's stronger, and we're going to pay for that (pardon the expression), with higher export prices, and lower profits on 2/3rds of the S&P500. "Ohhhh-hhhhhh!" Thems my thoughts, anyway.
As much as I cringe to admit this, when I pull out the long term logarithmic chart, my 'pivot' above the trend and into a bubble is mid-November 2016.
Slightly longer time frame. Sorry, this one will have to do. It's linear (my platform doesn't support logarithmic), and I kinda had to approximate the trend line because I can't get data going back far enough. But it makes my point all the same.
And to tie into my previous point about ineffectual government, look at 1994 (Clinton / Lewinsky) and 1924 (Coolidge). It's not a stretch to call either of those predictably ineffectual governments, nor is it a stretch to same the same of a divided republican party, a dunce in the white house, and a nearly evenly split senate that we have currently. Point is, this is the beginning of a (soon to be much hotter) bull bubble.
And to expand on the rational, but unprecedented, bullishness: At the turn of the 20th century, over the course of a generation, there was a proliferation (or consolidation) of some recent inventions: -Railroads / Trollies -Radios -electric lights -refrigeration / A/C -telephones These inventions changed the way people commuted, traveled, communicated, shopped, entertained themselves...during a single generation. It was a time when consolidation of the railroads allowed for the greatest concentration of wealth ever in human history. Air conditioning (theaters / department stores), refrigeration (groceries, cold beer), and electric lights (night life / theaters...) changed the way people entertained and shopped. Trolleys allowed for the first proto-suburbs. Railroads brought the other side of the nation to the masses in a matter of days, and safely. Now, consider companies like AAPL, Uber, AMZN, car shares, ULCC airlines...and smart phones. This has been a similar change to the way people commute, travel, communicate, shop, and entertain themselves. It's happened during a single generation. And inventions of the early 2000s have been consolidated in a few companies that that's allowing the greatest concentration of wealth ever in human history. ...seeing a theme here? It's like Pamplona in July.
One thing I always wondered... they always parade these charts of the Dow and S&P showing this slow and steady growth over the last century... thats all well and good...but show me a chart of the Dow 30 or the S&P with the original components. If a company under-performs.... it gets the boot. Pretty easy to engineer an ever rising index when you can just kick the losers out at will. But whadda I know.