Anyone that’s checked their IRA or 401(k) balance over the last year doesn’t need to be told that the market had a record year, and in more ways than one. Not only did it surge a record amount, it did so with practically no volatility. The number of days where the markets ever lost more than 2% of their value was in the single digits.
The media may be hysterical – but the market is calm. It’s particularly funny in light of the claims by a number of financial institutions and notable economists that the markets would plunge in the event of a Trump victory. They appeared to be right on election night, but not for more than a few hours. Economics Nobel Laureate and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman observed that night “markets are plunging,” then wrote, “If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never.”
If by “never” he meant “within the next 24 hours” he was spot on. In just the remaining trading days of 2016, the Dow Jones closed at all-time-highs 13 of those days. That was before Trump even took office, mind you.
Since then, the bull run has gone uninterrupted in what’s the second strongest bull market ever.
And closing out the year is something that hasn’t happened in at least 30 years – the stock market hasn’t had a single month of decline during the year. As you can see in the table below, even during the great bull markets of the 80s and 90s, there were down-months. And as you can also see, December is almost never a down-month (fueled by Christmas shopping, perhaps), meaning that we’re due for yet another stock market record as the year comes to an end.
Share this wonderful stock market story now with others to help them share in some of Trump’s Christmas magic!
