Trump wants more people to pay attention to stock market gains

The stock market has never been higher, and President Trump would like more people to pay attention.

Trump’s tweet referred to the Dow Jones industrial average. The 18,000 figure he cited, though, was inaccurate: The Dow closed at 19,890.94 six months ago. It was at 18,332.74 on election day, which was nearly nine months ago. And analysts say it would be inaccurate to give Trump full credit for the market’s records, at least those set during the last few months.

“Trump obviously is taking credit for a lot of this, as almost any president would do, but the things that affect the market right now aren’t things that have been put in place over the last six months,” said Randy Frederick, vice president of trading and derivatives at the Schwab Center for Financial Research.

Stocks did surge after Trump’s win in November following a couple of hours of confusion among investors caught off-guard by the voting results. The hope was that Trump and a Republican-controlled Congress would cut regulations, revamp the tax system, launch a big program for infrastructure and enact other pro-business policies.

Areas of the market that would benefit most from such policies soared much more than the rest of the market, and the effect was so strong that traders called it the “Trump trade.”

In recent months, though, Washington has had several high-profile stumbles, highlighted by the Senate’s latest failed attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act. That inaction has investors pushing back their expectations for when a tax plan and other policy changes could happen, and some are questioning how big those changes can be given Republicans’ struggles. So the Trump trade has not only faded but reversed course, with the initial leaders and laggards flipping places.

So what’s keeping stocks at record heights? A return to strong profit growth for U.S. companies is one of the biggest reasons, analysts say.

Trump appeared to acknowledge as much in a separate tweet in which he quoted Stuart Varney, host of Fox Business Network’s “Varney & Co.”

Trump tweeted about 20 minutes after Varney appeared Tuesday morning on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” to discuss the strength of the stock market, according to a segment that aired on Fox Business Network recapping Varney’s appearance and the president’s response.

Touting the market’s heights is a turnaround for Trump himself. He warned during last year’s campaign that U.S. stock prices may have climbed too high. At a presidential debate in September, for example, Trump talked about the dangers he saw as the Federal Reserve prepared to raise interest rates.

“We’re in a bubble right now,” he said. “And the only thing that looks good is the stock market, but if you raise interest rates even a little bit, that’s going to come crashing down.”

Since that comment, the Federal Reserve has raised interest rates modestly three times.

Trump’s attempts to highlight the strength of the economy came as he weighed signing a sanctions bill, sent to him last week by a near-unanimous Congress, that clamps down on Russia, along with Iran and North Korea, and ties Trump’s hands from offering Russian President Vladimir Putin relief from existing sanctions.

Trump is under pressure to sign the measure into law and aides say he will, if only because Congress could easily override a veto. Signing the bill, however, could sink his effort to improve relations with Russia and bond with Putin.

Also on Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders acknowledged that Trump “weighed in as any father would” in drafting a misleading statement for his son last month about Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with Russians during the presidential campaign.

By the acknowledgement, Sanders seemed to confirm the gist of a Washington Post story, published late Monday, that Trump dictated the statement for his son while aboard Air Force One.

-- This post contains reporting from Brian Bennett and Noah Bierman