Posted on 10/20/2017 9:04:57 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The stock market doesn't revolve around Donald Trump, regardless of what the president tries to claim.
This much should be clear to anyone who's enjoyed a seemingly endless series of record highs, even as Trump has failed to make progress on the policies he's been proposing for months.
Sure, politicians and their supporters like to take credit for good news, no matter where it comes from. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin even went as far as warning on Wednesday that the market would sink if Trump's tax plan weren't adopted because, he said, it's responsible for recent market records.
And it's true that Trump inspired a rally immediately after the election — something Business Insider noted in a recent assessment of the president's market proclamations — but for the past several months, other factors have lifted stocks to all-time highs.
Wall Street certainly agrees. In a recent note to clients, Credit Suisse's chief US equity strategist, Jonathan Golub, lamented the undue credit Trump seemed to be getting for stock records. Michael J. Wilson, a Morgan Stanley equity strategist, said earlier this week that Trump's tax plan hadn't yet priced into the market.
But just to make sure, Business Insider spoke with the managers of three multibillion-dollar funds, and they all say the so-called Trump bump has faded. While they think any tax plan that Congress passes could renew the president's influence on stocks, they credit the records to factors outside the president's control.
And interestingly enough, they each provided a different reason, which speaks to the fact that a great deal is going right for the US market outside Trump. In fact, things are going so well — and investors are willing to ignore Trump to such a degree — that even escalating tensions over possible nuclear warfare can't stop stocks.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
How do stock buy backs make sense at these huge PE ratios?
Then at least FBN doesn’t act like those clowns at CNBC, who always, ALWAYS, talk up the markets, like they are paid by Wall Street.
One could also ask why did the S&P go up 235% under Obama’s watch? There were some that were so convinced Obama was going to tank the stock market that they bailed out and/or put money in gold or some other such nonsense.
Sure — the markets went up mainly went up because of the rebound from the 2008 crash and the fed artificially pumping money into the economy. Still — one would think Obama’s awful economic policies would have offset that and had some impact. But it didn’t. The market did well IN SPITE OF Obama.
The market is a complicated equation and one can’t just use politics to gauge the outcome of the stock market.
The confuse people who have not learned long division. If you have fewer outstanding shares your earnings per share go up. Thus you PE multiples go up.
That is why it’s critical to understand apples to apples comparisons. But that requires thirty seconds or so of math. And math is hard.
Right but makes more sense though to buy back stock at lower PE multiples. Better off selling shares if PE is high and raise cash, right?
I have a niece who is a hard core,woman’s march,liberal.
She works for a non-profit that depends on donations.
She recently told me that they just got the largest donation since the organizion was founded. . (It WAS huge-—she gave me the amount.)
I told her that she could probably thank Trump for that.
She just sputtered,and changed the subject.
They have no use for the cash. They would have to pay tax on it. Stock buy backs are an expense.
They don’t want to make too much of a profit. The taxes are too damned high. And you get a better return if you use debt.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.