After plunging a few hundred points on Friday, the Dow dropped a record-breaking 1175 points yesterday. That the most points, but fortunately, the 4.6% drop was not the highest percentage-wise. All in all, 1 trillion dollars in net worth was lost.
It probably was a correction, but it raised fresh anxieties among Americans who have seen their retirement savings and household worth march steadily higher without any of the gyrations that are part of a normal market cycle.
It also deprives President Trump and the GOP of a favorite talking point. Stupidly, Trump owns this because he has taken credit for the stock highs… even as the White House attempts to move him away from this.
Today, it was expected that the Dow would open down… and it did… several hundred points. But then it made a rebound and went into positive territory, and as of 11 a.m. it is slightly down by 20 points. But the high-low span just for today (so far) is over 1000 points.
In any event, even if things normalize, I suspect the bragging may subside from the White House.
UPDATE at 3:15pm: Everything looks alright
LATE UPDATE — Dow closes UP 568.74
RELATED: Trump owns this too —
President Donald Trump came into office promising to reduce the U.S. trade deficit — and by that measure alone, his first year might be considered a dud.
The U.S. trade deficit increased more than 12 percent in 2017, to $566 billion — its highest level since 2008, according to figures released on Tuesday by the Commerce Department.
The bilateral trade deficit with China rose to a record $375 billion in 2017, and trade gaps with Mexico, Canada and Japan also increased.
During the 2016 campaign, Trump repeatedly zeroed in on the trade deficit, hammering it as a cause of U.S. economic decline and placing the blame on U.S. leaders, whom he accused of worshiping “globalism over Americanism.”
“This is not some natural disaster, it’s a political and politician-made disaster,” he said in a June 2016 speech in Monessen, Pennsylvania. “Very simple. And it can be corrected and we can correct it fast when we have people with the right thinking.”