Perspectives

This year will be best recalled as one where the economy went down, and the stock market went up. After suffering a 30 percent contraction in March and April, the GDP came back forcefully in the summer, only to fade out in the closing months of the year.

As the Coronavirus continues to stalk the land, killing at last count over 260,000 Americans, word of at least three vaccines have been delivered for FDA approval.

Many investors have decided to wait until the election is decided before investing in the stock market. Based on history, there is a two-to-one chance; this is a bad idea.

With so many people impaneled at home due to the coronavirus pandemic, and with the introduction of apps on smartphones like Robinhood that permits people to trade their accounts anywhere, a new generation of day trading has come back to the stock market at full force.

After five weeks of quarantine, many people are wondering when, if ever, life will return to normal. The short investment answer is that it won’t.

The effect on the stock market has been pandemonium. There is an old adage on Wall Street that markets take an escalator going up, but the elevator going down. Program trading has exacerbated this.