THE STOCK MARKET AND THE DONALD

It is no surprise that Donald Trump is more concerned about his re-election than he is about the people of the United States. One reason he has acted so cavalierly about the coronavirus epidemic is that he wants to minimize it’s effect on the stock market. He sees his re-election tied to the condition of the U.S. economy. It is an historic fact that incumbent POTUS’ in a strong economy get re-elected. And so The Donald cannot admit, in public at least, that the epidemic is serious and we should all be concerned about it. 

How bad is the market slump over the past week or so? Well, it is a serious decline, and it has the potential to get worse. Some analysts are saying that the market was in trouble before the epidemic, and this has simply hastened the inevitable. 

I generally don’t look at our retirement portfolio very often. I learned years ago that the short-term volatility of the market is normal, and being concerned about declines in portfolio value is an exercise in futility in most cases. This time, however, I had to take a look. Here is what our portfolio value looks like over the past 1 year (I cropped out the dollar values along the left side; there were no deposits and some withdrawals over this time period):

The point of this is that the market was amazing over the past year, and so far, the decline is relatively small compared to the 12-month gain. Yes, this kind of rapid decline is not good, but I feel no need to panic or be too concerned. Put another way, I’m OK losing paper value if it keeps Trump from being re-elected. (By the way, changes in the stock market are generally not easy to tie to the actions, or inactions, of a President. The market was gaining value for a number of years before Trump was in office, yes, under Obama.)

As usual, Trump only thinks about his own image, brand, wealth, and re-election, and the rest of us be damned. If you have not seen it yet, find on-line the video of Trump at the CDC yesterday, a brief stop on his way to play golf at Mar-a-Lago. He not only looks like a buffoon, he acts like one, too. In fact, he is a buffoon. If the reason for his visit were not so very serious, a major viral epidemic, we would laugh ourselves to tears. Instead, we look on in horror as a maniacal clown tells lies and minimizes the seriousness of the situation. 

Sometimes, clowns just aren’t funny. 

—-