August 17, 2017

Here’s an Odd Thing About the Stock Market

I was doodling away on some stuff and happened to notice something odd: the broader the stock index, the less it’s grown since the end of November. All of the widely tracked stock indexes spiked upward in the two weeks after Donald Trump’s victory, but since then they’ve grown very differently. Unadjusted for inflation, the Dow Jones has gone up about 15 percent. Pull out a bit, and the S&P 500 has gone up 11 percent. Pull out even further and look only at mid-size companies, and the Russell 2000 has gone up only 4 percent.

This might mean nothing. The Russell 2000 spiked a lot after Election Day, so maybe it just didn’t have a lot higher to go. Alternatively, it might mean that investors have remained pretty bullish on big companies in the Trump era but not so much on smaller ones. Here’s what the Russell 2000 looks like since November 8:

It’s barely moved since the end of November. Is this meaningful, or just some odd artifact of this particular index? I’m not sure, but I thought I’d share anyway.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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