The last time this happened, voters didn’t credit Bill Clinton. That may be a bad omen, or a good one.
If the stock market chose presidents, Joe Biden would be a shoo-in for reelection in 2024. The market rallied this month amid growing optimism about the economy, with the S&P 500 zooming 1.9 percent Tuesday on news that the consumer price index rose only 3.2 percent in October (compared to 3.7 percent in September). Stocks rallied again Wednesday on news that the producer price index fell 0.5 percent. Commentators are no longer debating whether the economy will experience a “soft landing” (i.e., a reduction in inflation without recession). The only question now is when it will arrive. The S&P 500 seems to have decided it’s already here.
But the stock market doesn’t choose presidents. Voters do, and polls continue to show they think the economy is in terrible shape. A Financial Times–Michigan Ross Nationwide Survey conducted November 2–7 is absolutely brutal on this point.
Mutual funds generally underperform the SP500 as a whole, as well as most broad-spectrum ETFs, and carry an expense ratio 5x higher than VG/Schwab ETFs just for fun. And that’s not even accounting for the class-A shares that a lot of financial advisors steer their retail clients into.
No, the “average” person should be putting whatever retirement money they can scrape together into index funds via Roth and/or traditional IRA, then regular retirement investments. But most “average” people can’t afford to even sock away 6 months’ worth of expenses in an emergency fund because healthcare costs and anything associated with raising kids has gone up a gazillion percent in the last 40 years while real wages have stayed stagnant.
Oh, also try buying a house while facing all of that AND student loans that Republicans are too pig-headed to let the government forgive even a fraction of.
“Financial illiteracy” isn’t the problem here, reality is.