Quarterly Insights

The prospect of tax and regulatory reform, fiscal spending and a new administration that was broadly viewed as business friendly continued to carry the post-election positive market momentum into the first few months of 2017. However, early resistance and setbacks to a number of cabinet appointments and the inability to build party consensus around changes to the Affordable Care Act cast a cloud over the pace and probability of additional reforms.

Not surprisingly, some of the survey data, while still up substantially post-election, gave back a portion of their recent gains. While survey data has been exceptionally strong post-election it has far outstripped the improvement in the real economy. The Consumer Confidence Index rose sharply in March to 125.6, up from 116.1 in February,1 whereas manufacturing indices saw slight declines in March, compared to February; PMI was down 0.5 percentage points to 57.2%, New Orders Index decreased 0.6 percentage points to 57.6% and the Production Index was down 5.3 percentage points to 57.6%.2

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