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re: TRUMPs' Sister Recorded Saying 'Donald is CRUEL & Has No Principles'
Everyone Thinks Trump Will Lose – Except The Stock Market
The S&P 500 has a remarkable ability to predict the winner of US elections
Trumps' chaotic leadership has squandered America’s role as a leader of the free world, and his mismanagement of COVID has been a disaster.
"Trump is the wrong president for our country" - Disaffected members of Mr Trump's Republican party also piled in on him
The Telegraph UK / BBC, 18 AUG 2020.
Inept, chaotic, confused and possibly corrupt. With the most infections in the world, and with little sign of a coherent plan for bringing it under control, US president Donald Trump’s catastrophic mismanagement of the Covid-19 crisis is widely assumed to have condemned him to defeat in November’s election.
He is behind in the polls, against a popular opponent who has now added an astute choice of running mate to the ticket.
But hold on. There is one exception to that consensus. The stock market. The record shows that if the bull market stays as strong as it has been, Trump will pull off an unexpected victory. People might or might not like that – but there is no point in ignoring it.
With the Covid-19 crisis getting worse and worse, with economies plunging into deep recessions, and with a wave of job losses on the horizon, the markets have not focused on November’s presidential election as much as they usually would. There is simply too much other stuff to worry about.
That said, as Nov 3 draws closer investors will start to focus on the contest for the White House and its likely impact on the global economy.
Everyone can have their own view on Trump’s presidency, of course. The record is, to put it mildly, mixed.
The reform of corporate taxes, the emphasis on deregulation, and the round after round of fiscal stimulus, have all helped the American economy. Against that, the tariffs, and the simple-minded protectionism, have set back the cause of free trade by a generation
His chaotic leadership has squandered America’s role as a leader of the free world, and the mismanagement of the virus has been a disaster.
Take it all together and it is hard to see how anyone could feel confident about a Trump second term.
By contrast, Joe Biden would return the US to the broadly centrist path of Obama, Bush and Clinton. Some of the overdue tax reforms would probably be kept in place. The trade wars would quietly be dropped. There would be some tax rises, especially on the rich, and more regulation of the tech giants.
Think George Bush senior on Mogadon – without much controversy, a lot more competence, and in vice-president Kamala Harris a punchy contender for 2024 if Biden decided one term was enough for a 77-year-old.
The polls suggest that is what the electorate want right now. The latest trackers put the Democrat on 50pc against 41pc for the Republican, with significant leads for Biden in key battleground states such as coronavirus-ravaged Florida.
It is rare that a lead that strong is thrown away in 10 weeks, and with the economy crashing, and the virus still rampant, there is not going to be much good news for the president. The smart money says Biden can start preparing his victory speech.
There is one problem, however. The stock market is predicting a Trump victory. Before rushing to any conclusions, stop and look at this statistic. In 20 out of the last 23 presidential elections, and in every one since 1984, if stocks are up in the three months before the election, the incumbent party wins. If they are down, it loses.
In reality, the market is a better indicator than the polls. In 2016, for example, just about everyone thought Hillary Clinton would win. But in the three months up to the election, the S&P 500 was down by 2.3pc.
What happened next? The incumbent party lost. When Obama was re-elected, stocks had been rising, but when he took the White House from the Republicans in 2008 they had crashed in the three months before the election. In fact, the last time the S&P 500 didn’t call the result correctly was in 1980, when Ronald Reagan won against Jimmy Carter even though equities were up by 7pc in the preceding months.
Before that, the rule didn’t work for Richard Nixon’s victory in 1968, and Dwight Eisenhower’s re-election in 1956. But that’s it. For every other contest since Herbert Hoover’s victory in 1928 (after a 13.6pc rise in the index, in case your memory doesn’t stretch back quite that far) it has held good.
That, of course, is telling us something about the 2020 race. Week after week, the market keeps hitting record highs. The S&P 500 is within a whisker of a fresh record, and is already up significantly since the start of August. The tech-heavy Nasdaq is on a rampant bull run.
Of course, a lot could change in the next couple of months. There are plenty of reasons to fear a correction. That said, equities have already taken Covid-19, lockdown and a deep recession in their stride, and recovered. It is hard to imagine what could count as bad news after all that.
If the market remains strong, then Trump is going to be re-elected – or else a record is going to be broken.
You may or may not like that. True, it might well be better for the economy for Trump to lose. Biden will find it easier to get Congress to agree to more spending. It will definitely be better for America’s standing in the world and the dignity of the office if he is replaced. But there is no point in ignoring the record and assuming there will be a change at the White House. Keep an eye on the S&P 500 over the next few weeks.
It is not simply telling you what is happening to your portfolio – it is also telling you who will win the presidential election.
MORE; Michelle Obama’s rebuke and anti-Trump Republicans: key ...
Michelle Obama Picks Trump Apart in Gripping DNC Speech
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has been doing the media round this morning talking about last night’s DNC opening. She said she felt it was pretty clear to everyone that “Michelle Obama knocked it out of the ballpark.”
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