How Will the Deficit Affect the Stock Market?

We’ve heard growing concerns from clients about the size of the U.S. budget deficit curtailing the economic recovery. Chief Investment Officer Jim Lowell responded to this concern in our recent webinar,* Looking Beyond the Election to the Recovery’s Future.

Please enjoy the excerpt below and click here for the full webinar replay to hear more.

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Jim Lowell:
In terms of the budget deficit and its size, it’s absolutely something that has been a source of steady concern, not just over the past year, not just over the past few years, but quite literally for decades. I would say that the argument right now is almost purely academic and theoretical, so we can punt it down the road. Because if we don’t see successive rounds of stimulus, both from the Federal Reserve, fiscal stimulus, maybe even more furlough-related kinds of stimulus, then I think that puts this slow-recovery, not no-recovery mode that we’re in in jeopardy.

A lack of stimulus would crimp the necessary infrastructure spending. By which we mean, not just the roads, bridges, sewer systems, but the hard asset kinds of infrastructure that we absolutely need to repair not just locally, but nationally. We’re also hopeful that we’ll see infrastructure spending on the technology superhighway. One of the things that the coronavirus has clearly demonstrated to us as a country is that, in order to create equal opportunity for all, we have to do a significantly better job at creating equal access to technology for all. So, we’re hopeful that that will in fact manifest itself.

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Click here for a replay of Looking Beyond the Election to the Recovery’s Future. Please contact us at (800) 492-6868 to learn more about comprehensive wealth management solutions.