Markets rose on Tuesday.
The MSCI All Country World Index rose 0.3 percent. The S&P 500 rose 0.2 percent to another all-time high. The STOXX Europe 600 also rose 0.2 percent.
Tim Knight at Slope of Hope calls the latest rally in stocks The Persistent Ascent.
“I don’t see what’s going to slow this down at any point,” he wrote. “Dow 50,000, here we come.”
Markets rose on Monday.
The S&P 500 rose 0.8 percent to an all-time high, the STOXX Europe 600 rose 0.3 percent and the MSCI Emerging Market Index rose 0.3 percent.
Oil surged. West Texas Intermediate crude rose 3.9 percent while Brent jumped 4.4 percent.
Bonds rose. The US 10-year Treasury yield fell four basis points to 2.32 percent.
“There’s optimism that it’s more likely that Trump is going to put us on an economic fast track versus Clinton,” said Terry Morris, managing director of equities at BB&T Institutional Investment Advisors.
However, JPMorgan Chase & Co. is doubtful that president-elect's fiscal plan will have the expected impact.
Michael Feroli, US economist at the bank, wrote on Friday that the “majority of the stimulus is expected to come through tax cuts and, relative to our prior forecast, should boost annualized GDP growth by about 0.25 percentage-point in the second half of 2017 and 2018, leaving the level of GDP about 0.4 percentage points higher at the end of 2018”.
Major stock markets have been in rally mode in recent weeks.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average hit a record high of 18,923.06 last Tuesday. Although it pulled back later in the week, it was up 0.1 percent for the week.
Also doing well recently is the Nikkei 225. After declining 18 percent in the first half of the year, the index has risen more than 20 percent from its June low.
Some analysts think that the Nikkei 225's bull run is not over yet.
“A lot of things are lining up for Japanese equities,” said Bryan Goh, chief investment officer of Bordier & Cie. “It looks like the economy is stabilizing and the weak currency is certainly helping. There’s some momentum behind this bull run.”
Naoki Murakami, a market strategist at AllianceBernstein, said that Donald Trump's victory in the US election “is a very big regime change in U.S. economic policy that could be a game-changer for the yen and the Japanese stock market”.
Markets were mixed on Friday.
The S&P 500 slipped 0.2 percent and the STOXX Europe 600 fell 0.4 percent.
Asian stocks were mixed. The Shanghai Composite Index fell 0.5 percent but the Nikkei 225 rose 0.6 percent.
Oil rose on Friday. Brent crude rose 0.8 percent while West Texas Intermediate crude rose 0.6 percent.
Bonds fell. The US 10-year Treasury yield rose 5.9 basis points to 2.337 percent to complete its largest two-week increase since November 2001.
Stocks mostly rose on Thursday.
The S&P 500 rose 0.5 percent and the STOXX Europe 600 rose 0.6 percent. However, the Nikkei 225 was flat.
US Treasuries fell. The yield on the 10-year note rose to 2.278 percent from 2.222 percent on Wednesday after Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen told a congressional hearing that an increase in interest rates “could well become appropriate relatively soon”.
Yellen added that the “risk of falling behind the curve in the near future appears limited” and that future rate increases will be “gradual”.
Not everyone agrees with her.
Deutsche Bank chief economist Joe LaVorgna told CNBC on Thursday that Trump will give the economy a lot of fiscal stimulus and that could put the Fed “in a really, really tough spot”.
Markets were mixed on Wednesday.
Both the S&P 500 and STOXX Europe 600 fell 0.2 percent.
However, the Nikkei 225 jumped 1.1 percent earlier in the day.
Oil fell but bonds rose.
Annika Eiremo, a fund manager at Janus Capital Group Inc., thinks that “rates have room to go higher” and that it is “still early stages of a very uncertain time period in terms of what policy will be”.
