Is it possible to sum up the American economy in a few pictures and numbers? And how well is Donald Trump doing anyway? If Trump is such a terrible president, why is the stock market still up?
No matter your political stance, haven’t you wondered about questions like that? Even if you love Trump, surely you have noticed a lot of people are very nervous about him.
I would like to address those questions and present an overview of where we are at in the simplest possible terms. I expect it will jibe with the politics of relatively few politically committed people, regardless of whether they are Trump supporters.
Let’s start with the first picture, namely the S&P 500.
S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC via Fred
As you can see, it is doing more than fine. One thing this means is that the world and American prosperity are unlikely to end anytime soon. American companies are worth a lot and the world recognizes this. As I pointed out in a recent column, the chipmaker Nvidia has recently been worth more on its own than the entire German stock market.