This is Trump's stock market, like it or not
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President Trump rejected any blame for the stock markets's slide this year in a post Wednesday morning: "This is Biden's Stock Market, not Trump's. I didn't take over until January 20th," he wrote on Truth Social.
- But in January 2024, when the market was doing well, but he wasn't even president yet, he had a different take: "THIS IS THE TRUMP STOCK MARKET BECAUSE MY POLLS AGAINST BIDEN ARE SO GOOD THAT INVESTORS ARE PROJECTING THAT I WILL WIN, AND THAT WILL DRIVE THE MARKET UP."
Why it matters: It's typically tricky to tie a U.S. president's actions to stock market performance — equities move for all kinds of reasons – but Trump's connection to the ups and downs of U.S. indexes this year is pretty clear cut.
Zoom in: After Trump was elected and into his inauguration, investors were giddy at the thought of a Republican administration that would relax regulation and lower taxes. Stocks rose.
- Tariff reality hit after "Liberation Day," when the president announced broad and high levies on imports from every country in the world. The S&P 500 declined sharply afterwards.
- Since then, the markets have seen historic volatility — rising and falling in connection with news coming out of the administration.
How it works: Stocks go up when it looks like tariffs will be eased, as in recent days.
- The market also fell after Trump suggested he'd fire Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, then rose last week when he backed off.
By the numbers: The S&P 500 is down 3.8% since just before the election, 6% for the year to-date — and nearly 10% since inauguration day.
- "On again, off again White House policy announcements have fueled volatility," writes Lisa Shalett, chief investment officer at Morgan Stanley Wealth Management.
In his post Wednesday, Trump said things would get better. "Tariffs will soon start kicking in, and companies are starting to move into the USA in record numbers," he wrote.
- "Our Country will boom, but we have to get rid of the Biden "Overhang." This will take a while, has NOTHING TO DO WITH TARIFFS, only that he left us with bad numbers, but when the boom begins, it will be like no other. BE PATIENT!!!
Reality check: Biden left office with a fairly strong economy, though under the hood in late 2024 there were signs of weakening, as Axios' Neil Irwin wrote last month.
The bottom line: If investor faith in Trump was enough to usher in a "TRUMP STOCK MARKET" 15 months ago, then the declining faith of those same investors is what the "Trump stock market" is now, in April 2025.
