AOM3: Dow Jones

The US stock market has been continually rising since early 2009. Since the 2008 financial crisis and stock market crash, it rose and rose until about a month ago. Between mid February and late March, it went from the highest in years to a significant drop. This is due to the coronavirus pandemic. The timeline works out to be that around the time it was declared a pandemic and social distancing orders began to be put in place, people started rapidly selling their shares in different stocks, and almost all went down. This was probably a logical choice for people being furloughed or fired, who needed this money to get through the next few months, but for people who are not in desperate need of this money, and are just scared about losing it, selling stocks as the market crashes was not a wise choice, as it just crashes faster and they lose money in the process. As can be seen on the Dow Jones Industrial Average chart, after the lowest point on March 23rd, the market significantly rose again, so for people with the means to do so, not selling was the wiser option. 
In the last few weeks, the markets have fluctuated a lot. I would expect this to continue to be the case for many months in the future, and possibly until the COVID-19 pandemic is over. It makes sense that people now without jobs or unable to work would sell some of their stocks in order to take care of themselves and their families, causing the markets to go down. As they go down, others might take advantage of the low prices, causing them to go up. I think we will see this especially clearly as the rules of social distancing change and shift. Many predictions about the next couple years that have some merit in my opinion say that we will probably move into a cycle of relaxing social distancing when cases go down and making it stricter as they go back up. It is likely that the stock market will move according to this as well. As social distancing gets stricter, it will fall, and as it gets looser it will rise. 

This could affect the power and sovereignty of the US federal government. While at times like this, they have very little control over the stock market, many people who don’t understand this use it as a measure of a president’s success. With presidential elections coming up so soon, President Trump knows that it is very important for his continued sovereignty as US president that the stock markets and economy stay good, so he is doing everything in his power to keep them rising.

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