Moneybox

Q4 GDP Revised Up, S&P 500 At All-Time High

Today the S&P 500 index reached its all-time high. As pedants pointed out when this happened with the Dow Jones Industrial Average a few weeks ago, that’s only true if you don’t adjust for inflation. As better pedants pointing out, you really also ought to account for dividends. If you’re not a pedant the important thing is that high stock market prices are normally a correlate of strong business investment activity (though not because firms actually raise investment funds by selling shares) and strong business investment activity is a good way for a depressed economy to add jobs.

Conveniently enough, we also got revised Q4 GDP numbers today. Specifically, numbers that were revised upward largely because of an upward revision to business investment numbers.