Really, investors couldn’t have asked for better returns.
From stocks to bonds to commodities, nearly every major asset class has risen substantially since the start of the third quarter in July, both in the United States and in many regions of the world.
If you held mutual funds or exchange-traded funds — used by most investors in the United States — there’s a good chance that you shared in the gains in the three months through September. And there were new market highs this past week.
This was an astonishing performance when you consider how bleak the news headlines have been.
Consider that President Trump has been ordering the National Guard into cities governed by Democrats. At the same time, Democrats in Congress have been refusing to accept the cuts in Medicaid and Affordable Care Act subsidies imposed by congressional Republicans and the Trump administration. As a result, the U.S. government has been shut since Oct. 1.
Tariff wars and deportations continue, the jobs market has weakened, and the Federal Reserve’s independence is under assault from the Trump administration. Mounting civil strife is evident in the United States on many fronts.
Despite all that, the markets in recent weeks have largely shrugged off the turmoil and powered ahead to even greater gains. Whether stocks, in particular, will continue to generate strong returns in this time of political stress is the big question — one that no one can answer.
Upward momentum is formidable. The Federal Reserve has started to cut interest rates, and corporate earnings are strong. Hundreds of billions of dollars in capital expenditures on artificial intelligence infrastructure are lifting the entire A.I. industrial complex, with shareholders of companies like Nvidia, Arm, Broadcom, Intel, Taiwan Semiconductor, Microsoft, Oracle and Meta all benefiting. And as the market has risen, Wall Street analysts have become increasingly bullish.
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The post Nasty News? Forget About It. The Markets Say All Is Well. appeared first on New York Times.
