The S&P 500 Just Hit A New All-Time High

U.S. stocks traded higher on Tuesday, pushing the S&P 500 to an all-time high.

S&P 500 on Tuesday rose 0.6 percent to  2872.99, its highest level ever. The S&P last traded at an all-time high in February.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 130 points or 0.5 percent. The Nasdaq Composite  did even better, rising one percent. The Russell 2000 index of small cap stocks gained 1.34 percent, also setting a new record.

The bull market in stocks is now 3,452 days old, tied with the longest running bull market on record. A bull market is thought to begin when S&P 500 stocks rise 20 percent from recent lows.

The post-election boom in the stock market has defied the predictions of many prominent economists and market watchers.

“Trump would likely cause the stock market to crash and plunge the world into recession,” MIT economist Simon Johnson said in November of 2016.

“It really does now look like President Donald J. Trump, and markets are plunging. When might we expect them to recover? A first-pass answer is never,” Paul Krugman wrote on election night.

There are many, many other examples of such incorrect forecasts of the stock market’s direction before and after the election. Most appear to be cases of economists letting their political biases color their analysis.