The Flying Frisby - money, markets and more America's Economic Boom vs. Stock Market Doom?
Heads up: there is now a video version of last week’s predictions piece, if you fancy:
Onwards …
I am bullish on America.
For all its failings, I think it’s still, as comedian Lewis Schaffer is forever telling me, “the greatest country in the world.”
The new administration has huge hurdles ahead of it - not least sorting out the excess spending on its military-industrial complex and atrocious healthcare system, though perhaps "system" is not the word I should be using. The administration also faces considerable resistance from its ideological opponents who prevail in the deep state.
But if Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, RFK, et al. get just a third of the stuff they have planned over the line, then the economy is going to boom like hell. There is a lot of money in that country, a lot of entrepreneurial spirit, and a lot of opportunity. Just the size of the US alone means it is, in itself, an enormous market.
However, while the economy and the stock market are bedfellows, they do not always march forward hand in hand. How often this century have we seen stock markets boom while life for the ordinary working person becomes ever harder? Inflation, for example, eats away at his effective earnings, and he struggles to keep up, while the same inflationary dynamic actually pushes up stock markets.
The reverse can also apply. There might be an economic boom "on the street," but stock markets, on the other hand, might be flat. Perhaps they already advanced a year ahead of the boom in anticipation. Perhaps life made better for the American worker by, say, tariffs does not suit global companies like Apple, and so stock prices retreat.
So, while I am bullish on America, am I bullish on US stocks?
I must confess to being rather more ambivalent, as there are a number of headwinds and warning signs.
Let’s look at some of them.
First, there is the small (by that I mean large) matter of the US dollar.