Investors focus on a business-friendly Trump
The stock market’s violent reaction to the presidential election results proved to be short lived. At its nadir, Dow futures plummeted 800 points after Donald Trump officially won the pivotal state of Florida—and Trump moved one giant step closer to the White House. But, as investors had a few hours to digest the idea of a President Trump, stocks began to claw their way back and even managed to rally.
That’s not the scenario most market watchers had predicted. Liz Ann Sonders, Charles Schwab’s chief investment strategist, predicted on Yahoo Finance weeks before the election that a surprise Trump win would be “quite unsettling” for the markets.
In the video above, Sonders tells me that the initial aggressive market sell off was overblown and that investors may now be focusing on Trump’s more business-friendly policies, including tax cuts and reduced regulation in the banking industry.
Sonders predicts more market volatility through the end of the year and at least through the first quarter of 2017. She says global markets will be watching Trump’s first 100 days very closely to see which of his policy agendas gets priority.
She believes Trump’s surprising victory should not disrupt the Federal Reserve’s plans to raise interest rates at its December meeting.
Sonders says if Fed policymakers don’t raise rates then, they risk being perceived as “behind the curve” when it comes to corralling inflation. And that, she says, would be a real problem for this bull market.
Despite Trump’s repeated criticism of Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, Sonders doesn’t expect any immediate changes at the helm of the central bank.