Traders at the NYSE in late February; fears over COVID prompted a stock market plunge
“Look at our stock market,” he boasted to a Michigan crowd. “Our stock market’s just about at an all-time high,” he echoed himself at a later event in Wisconsin. And bemoaning the lack of credit Trump claims he deserves for the stock market surge since March, he urged his Twitter followers to “Remember, ‘It’s the economy stupid.’ ”
Since late March the S&P 500, the main U.S. market benchmark, has soared 51 per cent, while the S&P/TSX composite index, its Canadian counterpart, is up nearly 40 per cent, both near their record highs. Over the same period economies have only partially clawed their way out of the COVID canyon. America has added back 11.4 million jobs, but another nearly 11 million people are still out of work.
For one, the market crash in February that saw stocks erase four years of gains was driven by the deep fear of not knowing how severe COVID was going to be in terms of morbidity. “It turned out to not be the worst-case scenario,” says Felix Narhi, chief investment officer at PenderFund Capital Management. “All these things are more knowable now. COVID is more contagious than SARS [the virus behind the 2003 outbreak] but it’s not as deadly.
Also, when did SteveCarell become a stockbroker?