US stocks shrug off the government shutdown

published 26 January 2018

880_MW_P06_Markets_Main — Washington is dysfunctional, but markets are used to that by now

In 2017, the US administration's tax cuts "had investors celebrating the news out of Washington", says Justin Lahart in The Wall Street Journal. "This year will be different." The past few days have seen the first US government "shutdown" since 2013. Last week Congress failed to approve a bill to continue funding government operations (it has to keep agreeing short-term deals because it hasn't hammered out a budget to cover the entire fiscal year).

During a shutdown non-essential operations are suspended and some government workers go on unpaid leave. Early this week, however, the deadlock was broken. Democrats in the Senate agreed to funding until 8 February in return for some Republican concessions on immigration.

US equities have largely ignored the fuss, hitting yet more record highs. Quite right too, says Christopher Beddor on Breakingviews. There have been 18 such episodes since the 1970s. The economic impact is slight and the median movement in the S&P 500 index over the past 18 shutdowns has been zero.

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A new headache for investors

There is a longer-term cost, however, continues Beddor: these episodes "encourage harsher political posturing", entrenching division and legislative gridlock. The increasingly rancorous atmosphere could prove especially awkward over the next few months.

The debt ceiling, an artificial constraint on how much Washington is allowed to borrow, will need to be lifted next month. The government would theoretically run out of money to pay its bills if the opposition, using the issue as leverage, refuses to let it borrow more. The US came close to a default during a debt-ceiling dispute in 2011. Partisan strife could also stymie co-operation between Donald Trump and Congress over trade, "raising the odds of the US pulling out of trade treaties", adds Justin Lahart. For all these reasons, the political backdrop is likely to prove a headache for investors this year.

Watch out for inflation

Still, equity markets have learnt to deal with Washington's dysfunctionality over the years. A bigger problem for markets, especially now that the improving data suggests the US is set to enjoy "a good old-fashioned boom", is inflation, says Robin Wigglesworth in the Financial Times. As growth accelerates, inflation will edge closer to 3%, a level that has historically severely rattled both bonds and equities. The official gauge is still just 2.1%, but here's a statistic worth bearing in mind: the New York Fed's measure of inflation, which is considered especially good at pinpointing cyclical turning points in underlying inflation, is just below 3%.

Andrew is the editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He grew up in Vienna and studied at the University of St Andrews, where he gained a first-class MA in geography & international relations.

After graduating he began to contribute to the foreign page of The Week and soon afterwards joined MoneyWeek at its inception in October 2000. He helped Merryn Somerset Webb establish it as Britain’s best-selling financial magazine, contributing to every section of the publication and specialising in macroeconomics and stockmarkets, before going part-time.

His freelance projects have included a 2009 relaunch of The Pharma Letter, where he covered corporate news and political developments in the German pharmaceuticals market for two years, and a multiyear stint as deputy editor of the Barclays account at Redwood, a marketing agency.

Andrew has been editing MoneyWeek since 2018, and continues to specialise in investment and news in German-speaking countries owing to his fluent command of the language.