August 17, 2017

Here’s an Odd Thing About the Stock Market

I was doodling away on some stuff and happened to notice something odd: the broader the stock index, the less it’s grown since the end of November. All of the widely tracked stock indexes spiked upward in the two weeks after Donald Trump’s victory, but since then they’ve grown very differently. Unadjusted for inflation, the Dow Jones has gone up about 15 percent. Pull out a bit, and the S&P 500 has gone up 11 percent. Pull out even further and look only at mid-size companies, and the Russell 2000 has gone up only 4 percent.

This might mean nothing. The Russell 2000 spiked a lot after Election Day, so maybe it just didn’t have a lot higher to go. Alternatively, it might mean that investors have remained pretty bullish on big companies in the Trump era but not so much on smaller ones. Here’s what the Russell 2000 looks like since November 8:

It’s barely moved since the end of November. Is this meaningful, or just some odd artifact of this particular index? I’m not sure, but I thought I’d share anyway.

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We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

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