Dow is currently in a freefall

[_EAllusion]

Most of the churn of the economy has absolutely nothing to do with what a President is doing, at least insofar as behavior differs from one President to the next. So an absolute indicator of economic activity can't tell you about the "job" a President is doing. This is both because it is difficult to disentangle presidential effects from other causes and because the direction of Presidential influence may be in the opposite direction or neutral to what's happening in the real economy. Instead, if you want a sense of whether a president is good or bad for the economy, you have to reach to underlying theory and compare that to presidential behavior. That's harder and less exciting.

Somewhere on another planet, the press figured out that the public approves or disapproves of the President heavily based on economic conditions like he's some kind of fischer king. Rather than attempt to disabuse this notion, mainstream press mostly just feeds into it by taking it as an indication of presidential performance and justifying that angle with public perception in a hellish tautological feedback loop.

[_honorentheos]

I have a question for the combatants on this thread:

What would be an acceptable score on the Consumer Confidence Index that would indicate to you the President is doing a good job with the economy?

- Doc

There are two questions in this, in my opinion.

The first is asking what kind of CCI score indicates consumers feel like the economy is doing well, and by proxy that the President is doing a good job with his magic presence making this so? Objectively, a number over 100 supposedly shows the respondents have a positive outlook, right?

The second way to look at the question is to read it as what score would economists (people who look at things like the CCI) view as a positive indicator?
In this case, the trend is probably more important than the score in regards to this question, so if we say the CCI is trending up the public could be said to have a positive view of how the President is handling the economy.

Personally, I don't think the CCI means much as far as fundamentals go, though. It's reactionary rather than informed. It's like looking at a poll to see how the public feels about a President's handling of a situation. People can be very satisfied with what a President does or says, and be unaware that it set off rippling effect that put in motion future events that will be viewed very negatively when the seed ultimately bears fruit.

As far as Trump's actual impact on the economy, I think he's more of an anomaly from what one normally expects. Markets clearly responded to the promise of decreased regulation, tax cuts, and big infrastructure projects immediate after his election before he even took office. Economists talk about Trump as having dumped the reserve gas onto a hot economy. Of course we hit 4.1% GDP in the 2nd quarter of 2018. viewtopic.php?p=1133838#p1133838

The thing is, this is paralleling his business approach. He's loading the US up with debt, manipulating the near term performance to force meteoric improvements but at the expense of sustainable growth. And he has been quoted as saying he won't be in office when the bills come due. In other words, he's structured his Presidency so that he can let it go through bankruptcy after he's safely away from the fallout.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

In other words, he's structured his Presidency so that he can let it go through bankruptcy after he's safely away from the fallout.

Oof. That's a terrifying thought. I wish there was a way his base could be made to understand this.

- Doc

[_Kevin Graham]

This thread began when the market entered correction territory, and it is still there.

The DOW reaching 24,000 is still roughly 10% lower than what it was back in January so why would that change any of the facts as I have laid them out?

Because the Dow was ~19900 when he was sworn in. If the Dow finishes at ~24000 at the at approximately his three-year mark that's a net gain of 5000. That's not only good, it's great. It's a solid, stable, overall healthy gain; maybe even a little too healthy. It'd be amazing, for sure. If the Dow had averaged that kind of growth since I started to pay attention to and putting my money into the market when it was solidly under 10000 we'd be at ~38000 right now.

You're playing with numbers that show you're not really interested in the overall health of the American economy, but trying to use market jujitsu number bending to make Trump (and by extension the GOP) look bad when he really isn't that much of a factor other than pumping debt into the economy and idiotically paying tariff games with China. You can pick at his bad policies, but acting like the Dow is tied to his Presidency is akin to holding the butt stock of a shotgun up to your face and pulling the trigger.

Anyway. When and if the market actually adjusts this next year because Democrats refuse to keep printing money because they actually care about the dollar (hopefully), I wouldn't be surprised if the Dow takes some more consistent downturns around summertime. I wouldn't be surprised if Trump finishes out his first term closer to his starting point. That would then be a more accurate take on his Presidency's financial policies coupled with Congress' refusal to debt-finance them. We actually need that desperately, but I have a feeling both sides will be screaming at each other rather than acting on good faith and getting our finances on solid footing. I actually think it'd be a good thing if the Dow finished 2019 at ~20000 to 20500. But then again, I'm skittish and just want our economy to be slow and steady.

- Doc

I'm not the one bending numbers. You just insist on missing the point. How can Trump supporters (who kept harping on and on about the market surge being proof of Trump's business acumen and superiority as a leader) respond to the fact that the market has only increased 16% over Trump's first 26 months when the market literally increased 65% during the first 26 months of Obama's first term. Following their own logic, market performance proved Obama was the better first term President. I know it has been a long time since the 3rd and 4th reiterations that this was the entire point of the thread, but please try to keep up.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

I'm not the one bending numbers. You just insist on missing the point. How can Trump supporters (who kept harping on and on about the market surge being proof of Trump's business acumen and superiority as a leader) respond to the fact that the market has only increased 16% over Trump's first 26 months when the market literally increased 65% during the first 26 months of Obama's first term. Following their own logic, market performance proved Obama was the better first term President. I know it has been a long time since the 3rd and 4th reiterations that this was the entire point of the thread, but please try to keep up.

You're not the one keeping up, homeslice. As I've explained you're attempting to troll the "Conservatives" on this board by posting every_single_downturn the Dow experiences, but it has the opposite effect because when it bumps up they'll be like, "See? Hmph. President Trump is great!"

Also, you keep noting that the Dow had a long bullish run under President Obama, so it's not lost on anyone that you think the economy as represented by the Dow was affected by the President's tenure. So, which is it? Does the Dow respond to a President's time in office or not? If so, then you're enabling the "Conservatives" with bad reasoning, and if not then you're attempt at trolling is just crap because it has the opposite effect.

But, hey man, you do you.

- Doc

[_Chap]

You just insist on missing the point. How can Trump supporters (who kept harping on and on about the market surge being proof of Trump's business acumen and superiority as a leader) respond to the fact that the market has only increased 16% over Trump's first 26 months when the market literally increased 65% during the first 26 months of Obama's first term. Following their own logic, market performance proved Obama was the better first term President.

Also, you keep noting that the Dow had a long bullish run under President Obama, so it's not lost on anyone that you think the economy as represented by the Dow was affected by the President's tenure

I think KG has made himself quite clear. Whether or not the stock market is an index of the health of the economy is not the point.

The point of his posts as he has stated explicitly, and as I have always understood them, is that Trump supporters crowed loudly over rises in the index as a sign of Trump's success in running the economy. So:

(a) What is their response when the market tanks?
(b) What is their response to the fact that the market often did better under Obama?

Those are legitimate questions whatever the true importance of the stock index may or may not be.

(by the way: if we are trying to be serious, can we stop talking as if there is this single thing called 'the economy' which is good or bad, getting better or getting worse, so that we can ask simple questions like 'Does the stock index tell us about the state of the economy?'. There are a huge number of entities and activities, some of them quite hard to define or measure, which form part of the broad spectrum of things we might agree to call 'economic'. Picking any one of them to represent that whole complex is a fast route to dangerous oversimplification.)

[_subgenius]

...
Those are legitimate questions whatever the true importance of the stock index may or may not be.

Nope, these are straw man arguments based upon a revisionist history of this thread. Everyone here knows what KG's intent is with this thread and what his depth of understanding is for this topic.
Your post here is amusing as it seems that you are becoming a Sarah Huckabee of sorts for KG...congrats on that.

[_Kevin Graham]

You're not the one keeping up, homeslice. As I've explained you're attempting to troll the "Conservatives" on this board by posting every_single_downturn the Dow experiences, but it has the opposite effect because when it bumps up they'll be like, "See? Hmph. President Trump is great!"

1. I haven't posted every_single_downturn.

2. Those who go "See? Hmph. President Trump is great!" only reinforce the point of their stupidity and I highlight it with graphs like these.

Also, you keep noting that the Dow had a long bullish run under President Obama, so it's not lost on anyone that you think the economy as represented by the Dow was affected by the President's tenure.

That is an illicit leap from what I've said. I provide the uptick during Obama for proper context.

So, which is it? Does the Dow respond to a President's time in office or not? If so, then you're enabling the "Conservatives" with bad reasoning, and if not then you're attempt at trolling is just crap because it has the opposite effect.

But, hey man, you do you.

- Doc

Which is it? Just when we thought you "got it" you revert back to this silly straw man. I've never once said the market did awesome because of Obama. What you infer is on you, but it is refreshing to at least see that other folks here get it.

[_Kevin Graham]

...
Those are legitimate questions whatever the true importance of the stock index may or may not be.

Nope, these are straw man arguments based upon a revisionist history of this thread. Everyone here knows what Kevin Graham's intent is with this thread and what his depth of understanding is for this topic.
Your post here is amusing as it seems that you are becoming a Sarah Huckabee of sorts for Kevin Graham...congrats on that.

Um, you're boy ranted for months about how he was going to make Americans $4,000 richer via tax cuts and the stock market. At the end of the day the joke is on idiots like you who actually believed him. Of course, you're not invested in the market so it is easy for you to be so nonchalant about it. If you understood crap about the market you'd understand that the only people who can possibly make big money off of these sporadic swings that last a day or two, aren't those sitting on 401k's. The people making big money from that are typically day traders who represent less than 1% of the population.

[_honorentheos]

Everyone here knows what KG's intent is with this thread...

He called bach out on the second post of the thread. He's clearly trolling bach's penchant for starting threads in 2017 proclaiming the stock market proved conservatism true, the holy ghost bore witness of it, and Trump was serving liberal tears in buckets at fancy dinner parties because they couldn't deal with this reality.

In some way I agree with Cam that, even as trolling, it is a choice to play the game by bach's rules so when the market inevitably moves in positive directions the result will be bach thinking it's back to being his turn to crow. EA has the more level headed approach of pointing out the game itself isn't even wrong, it's so misguided. But I think that's lost on people like you and bach. And frankly, knowing Kevin is legitimately successful in his businesses trolling a poser like bach whose pretend resume isn't fooling anyone on the board adds a little humor to what otherwise is not that different from every other small-scaled personal duel that occurs on the board all the time.