Nearly a week after saying the stock market would crash if he were impeached, President Donald Trump took to Twitter on Thursday to laud a recent rally in stocks, which has taken U.S. benchmarks to repeated records, and to suggest that he may delivering more reasons to juice Wall Street’s buying binge:
‘The news from the Financial Markets is even better than anticipated. For all of you that have made a fortune in the markets, or seen your 401k’s rise beyond your wildest expectations, more good news is coming!’
President Trump
It isn’t clear what Trump might be hinting at, if anything, but the run-up in stocks of late has been buttressed, at least partly, by reported progress in trade talks between the U.S. and Nafta partners Mexico and Canada.
The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday reported that trade ties between the U.S. and Canada have taken an optimistic turn as the two countries indicated that they could forge a pact to resolve their trade differences and carve out a new North American Free Trade Agreement—though Trump claimed the Nafta name is being abandoned—as soon as Friday. Those negotiations were prompted by a tentative agreement on trade announced between Mexico and the U.S. on Monday.
Against that backdrop, the S&P 500 SPX, -0.44% and the Nasdaq Composite Index COMP, -0.26% have put in four straight records, marking their longest such streak since early this year, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -0.53% stands less than 2% shy of its all-time high of 26,616.71 put in on Jan. 26. On Thursday, however, stock benchmarks closed lower on concerns about China tariffs.
Tariff disputes between the U.S. and traditional allies has provided arguably the greatest headwind to stocks clambering higher, though questions remain on the degree of progress that has been made in talks between China and the U.S.
Still, the biggest tailwind for equity benchmarks has been the corporate tax cuts that were signed into law in late 2017 and oft-cited as a factor helping to buoy corporate results and economic growth, in an economy that’s in its ninth year of expansion.
For his part, Trump has wrestled with legal matters that could present headaches for him in the future after his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort was found guilty on eight federal charges including tax fraud, and his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, said he violated campaign-finance law at Trump’s direction.