Santa Fe New Mexican

Stocks are at records, but it’s no longer the “Trump trade.”

- By Stan Choe and Marley Jays

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

“Stock Market could hit all-time high (again) 22,000 today,” Trump tweeted Tuesday about the Dow Jones industrial average, before it ended the day at a record 21,963.92. “Was 18,000 only 6 months ago on Election Day. Mainstream media seldom mentions!”

The 18,000 figure he cited 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 recent records.

“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 electoral 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.”

Smaller companies, for example, were supposed to be big winners if U.S. tax rates dropped because they tend to do more of their business domestical­ly, and they do not have the armies of accountant­s that big multinatio­nal corporatio­ns use to lower their tax bills.

As a result, the Russell 2000 index of smaller stocks surged 16 percent in the month after the election. The index includes such companies as Pier 1 Imports and Big Lots. Its gain was more than triple the 5 percent rise for the biggest stocks in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index.

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 far this year, the small-cap Russell 2000 has had less than half the gain of the S&P 500 index, at 5 percent versus 11 percent. Producers of raw materials, which were early winners on expectatio­ns that they would benefit from a big infrastruc­ture program, are no longer leading the market. The effect goes beyond stocks: Big rallies for yields on Treasury bonds and the dollar’s value against other currencies have also faded.

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. And some of the strongest growth is coming from companies that do business all over the world. Those businesses also happen to be the ones initially thought to be the biggest losers of Trump’s “Americafir­st” policy goals.

Tech stocks in the S&P 500 get more than half their sales from outside the country and they are benefiting as economies in Europe and across the developing world finally start to climb higher. The tech sector has jumped 22 percent this year to lead the market.

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