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“ ‘We’ve seen the lows in March and we will never see those lows again’ ”
That is Jeremy Siegel, professor of finance at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, during CNBC’s “Squawk Box” segment on Friday, expressing nearly unfettered optimism about the path forward for the U.S. stock market, despite a historically bad jobs report.
Friday’s monthly report on the employment situation in the U.S. showed that 20.5 million jobs were eliminated last month, and the unemployment rate rocketed to 14.7% from a 50-year low of only 3.5% two months ago, as the coronvirus pandemic shutdown businesses across the country. However, the headline number was less worse than some estimates for 22 million unemployed.
Although the government didn’t keep records back then, economic historians estimate unemployment peaked at 25% in 1933.
Still, Siegel, says unprecedented support for the economy now by the Federal Reserve and the U.S. government make it nearly impossible for the stock market to revert to its late March lows.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +1.52% is up about 30% from its March 23 low at 18.591.93, while the S&P 500 SPX, +1.38% is up by about the same amount from its low at 2,237.40 and the Nasdaq Composite Index COMP, +1.44% has climbed by 32.5% from its bear-market nadir at 6,850.67, according to FactSet data.
In fact, the Wharton professor envisions equity markets rising well into 2021 as treatments and vaccines for the COVID-19 disease are discovered.
“I think 2021 could be a boom year,” he told the business network. “With the liquidity that the Fed is adding, unprecedented. It could be a really good year,” he said.
Siegel garnered acclaim after he forecast that the Dow would reach 20,000 at the end of 2015. The index ended that year at 17,425.
Read: Stock market could retest lows once investors see coronavirus toll on earnings, says Mark Mobius
Check out: Will U.S. stocks lurch lower from here? Look to past ‘waterfalls’ for context
