The oft-cited analogy of Mexico’s pitiful GDP growth and stellar stock market from 1993-2013 vs. China’s transformative GDP growth and pitiful stock market over the same period is a valid one, if not excessively illustrative. The 2009-2017 period of sub-2% real GDP growth in the U.S. economy was itself abnormal, especially atypical of a post-recession period. So that disconnection between our stock market and our sad GDP growth was not historically counter-intuitive, but it certainly can be said that it was stretched. A GDP growth of ~2% in 2019 means something very different for stock markets than a GDP growth of ~3% does. Therefore, the trade war is the first variable since the financial crisis to intensify the correlation between economic growth and stock market performance.

Source: Forbes December 11, 2018 18:54 UTC