Remember the virus?
The stock market sure doesn't but the US, on the whole, just reported it's second-highest jump in infections and governors and mayors were scrambling to issue new mask orders and limit the size of gatherings. Several large school districts also said they would open the academic year with online classes, bucking pressure from President Trump and his administration to get students back into classrooms as quickly as possible.
The new restrictions reflect a painful reality that America’s outbreak, which has increased in 41 states over the past two weeks, may worsen in the coming weeks and months. Wednesday’s tally of more than 67,300 new infections was about 1,000 cases shy of the record set late last week, according to a New York Times database, as the country’s total number of cases passed 3.5 Million. Meanwhile, 963 more of Trump's "Virus Soldiers" died yesterday in their brave struggle to keep the economy open for the President's Re-Election – no matter how many lives it costs.
As you can see from the S&P Chart, we were rebounding just fine in May, while we were still locked down as life was ajdusting to the "new normal" – as it did in the rest of the World. 2 months ago, on May 16th, we had less than 1.5M viral infections in the US and we had drastically slowed the spread – even with many states not following the lockdown protocols. BUT, then we had this rush to "re-open" into the Holiday Weekend and, in just two months since then, we have added 2M more cases and the chart is RAPIDLY accellerating as we hit two new records in the past 5 days.
DESPITE pouring $2.7Tn of direct stimulus into the economy and another $4Tn of aid from the Fed – we are STILL not back at our February highs – excpet the Nasdaq, which is way off in fantasy land at 10,550, after testing 11,000 on Monday. The Nasdaq was at 9,500 in February so it's up 11% during the pandemic while the S&P is less than 200 (5.8%) points off it's high.
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