U.S. President Donald Trump just claimed that since November, after his unexpected election as 45th president, the country’s stock market added $4 trillion in value. While there was some growth, market watchers disputed his figures.
The added value of the Stock Market was much lower than $4 trillion Trump claimed when he delivered a speech to the Three Seas Initiative in Warsaw, Fortune reported. The president explained the growth to the removal of restrictions and “people really moving hard.”
Trump Bump - is it real or imagined?
A campaign promise by Trump to reduce corporate taxes and roll back regulation has resulted in the U.S.
stock market breaking records several times. The president even criticized media for not reporting about the Dow Jones hitting a new intraday all-time high on July 4. Business Insider, however, noted that on Monday, the index closed below its June 19 record. Moreover, the S&P 500 has not gone beyond the June 19 high and the NASDAQ Composite is about 200 points off the June 8 high.
Dow hit a new intraday all-time high! I wonder whether or not the Fake News Media will so report?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 3, 2017
Howard Silverblatt, a veteran stock market watcher at the S&P Dow Jones Indices, pointed out that Trump’s speech suggests a $22.4 billion market value for the S&P 500, or a 22 percent boost since November 8.
The correct figure is a 13 percent hike in market capitalization which reached $20.8 trillion, but the increase in the S&P 500 during that period was lower at $2.4 trillion, Silverblatt said.
The $2.4 trillion is not a poor performance, he said. Fortune said the president’s $4 trillion figures could be the result of the billionaire rounding up the market value for the S&P 500 by $1.6 trillion or he cited another stock market index.
If data from other developed markets are included, the growth since November was $5.2 trillion, but the figure Trump cited is still short by $1 trillion.
Consistent with Wilbur Ross data
Fortune added that the $4 trillion growth is consistent with earlier claims that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross made on CNBC. The amount is actually the whole package on which Trump was elected on, but critics warn that investors could be getting ahead of themselves since the president is not sure of getting all the reforms he wants from Congress.
Trump also pointed to a 16-year low of 4.3 percent unemployment rate in May. Business Insider, however, stressed that when Trump was elected, joblessness rate was already down to 4.6 percent from initiatives put in place by former President Barack Obama the last eight years.
