[Infowarrior] - OT: Live by the Dow, Die by the Dow?

[Richard Forno]

Live by the Dow, Die by the Dow?
By Peter Baker and Binyamin Appelbaum

Feb. 5, 2018

WASHINGTON — As President Trump boasted about the economy during a speech on Monday, he left out one of his favorite lines. Nowhere did he mention the skyrocketing stock market.

Viewers at home understood why. In the corner of their television screens, a graphic showed the Dow Jones industrial average seemingly in free fall — down 500 points, down 600, down 800, down 1,000.

By the time a bullish Mr. Trump was done speaking in Blue Ash, Ohio, the bearish market had plunged by nearly 1,600 points before recovering somewhat to close 1,175 points down.

No president in modern times has connected his political fortunes to the stock market as much as Mr. Trump, who relentlessly cited its meteoric rise as a sign of his success at restoring confidence in the American economy. But the drastic sell-off on Friday and Monday demonstrated why most presidents scrupulously avoid talking about short-term gyrations in share prices: If you live by the Dow, you may die by the Dow.

Barely a week went by last year when Mr. Trump did not crow about the rising market, making it a major talking point for his case to the country that he had made a difference. He took credit for the market at least 25 times in January alone. Even when the Dow fell 363 points on the day of his State of the Union address last week, Mr. Trump simply ignored the drop and talked about how the market had “smashed one record after another” since his election.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/05/us/politics/trump-stock-market-economy.html