Over the past few weeks, the financial news media has been marveling at what it calls the “disconnect” between stock prices and the economy. Economic and health statistics are likely to go from bad – 30 million unemployed in the past month, a 4.8% drop in first-quarter GDP, an 8.7% drop in retail sales in April, more reported coronavirus cases and deaths – to worse – a nearly 40% drop in GDP and around 15% unemployment in the second quarter, according to the Congressional Budget Office’s latest projections. Yet the stock market has blissfully regained about half of the 34% drop it sustained between mid-February and mid-March.

But is there really a disconnect? Does the economy – now largely controlled by the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury Department – still have any correlation to what happens in the stock market anymore, and vice versa? Well, the answer is yes, but not in the way it used to. What’s happening is that as the economy goes deeper into the red, the more it prompts the government to pump in more money and for the Fed to intervene more in the financial markets. That is unquestionably good for stocks.

We have been in an environment since the 2008 financial crisis where the Fed has played an unprecedented activist role in the bond market and, indirectly, the stock market. That role has grown further under Chair Jerome Powell, who seems to believe it’s the Fed’s job to rescue equity investors any time stock prices correct, never mind what’s going on in the economy. Now that we’re in the middle of an economic downturn that makes 2008 look like a garden-variety recession, the Fed has put its monetary policy and quantitative-easing engines into Continue reading "Disconnect? What Disconnect?" →