Wednesday morning, as yet unidentified assailant shot dead The CEO of controversial health insurance company UnitedHealthcare was at the New York Hilton Midtown suburb where his parent company, UnitedHealth Group, was about to hold an investor meeting. That meeting was canceled, of course, but UnitedHealth investors didn't seem too upset. In fact, aside from a brief dip in the aftermath of the murder, UnitedHealth's stock price has plummeted. made a huge rebound Wednesday night's closing price was $610.79, the highest price in a month and not far below UNH's year-to-date high of $625.25, which it hit just after the election.
Does it make sense? Indeed, yes, a healthy financial outlook for the company was predicted in 2025. And stock prices actually started to correct. a bit It fell below the $600 milestone on Thursday, but fell short of its year-to-date low of $439.20 in April.
Remember, this was the year for traders at UnitedHealth. continued to sell stocksthe company is sued by the federal government To prevent a planned takeover, Personal information of approximately 100 million customers UnitedHealth was found to have both stolen in a Russian cyber attack. exploited veterans and Introduced an algorithm to reject Millions of Americans receive mental health treatment. But the CEO's assassination, a shocking end to an ignominious year, quickly took a backseat to internal conversations about promising financial information.
Let's put it this way: Would you consider yourself a shareholder of any of the following? 10 largest companies in the world I was looking for reaction Across social media—by far peck fun at the deceased, and remind the reader UnitedHealth generates revenue primarily through: deceptive meansthe American Economic Freedom Project once said “UnitedHealth Group Abuse Tracker” — and conclude that that sentiment won’t seriously impact them and the company’s bottom line?
That's probably a naive question, given that over the past several years Americans have seen an ever-widening disconnect between stock market trends and stock price trends. they are I'm doing it individually. No, the stock market is not the only economy, but it continues to be cited as a “traditional indicator” of economic health and should be recorded as such by the public. As the Brookings Institution explains: October reportStock market performance was generally considered one of four major indicators that served as a reliable predictor of Americans' financial satisfaction before the pandemic. Three other indicators: unemployment, inflation, and spending habits.
Clearly, this equation is skewed in the post-pandemic economic recovery, with prices more deeply imprinted in voters' minds than anything else. As my colleague Shirin Ali and I have pointed out, there are countless pain points for Americans that are simply not covered by these variables. Modern inflation meters do not incorporate the inflated costs of mortgages, debt, and insurance. High “total consumption” in the 2020s is mostly made up of consumers spend money on the exact necessities; low unemployment and a strong job market make up for it. university graduate often face high rate underemploymentand stock market performance is largely operating at a height far removed from the harsher realities on the ground. UnitedHealth may have been a “good” stock this year, but the number of Americans without health insurance grew this year.
That's no coincidence. As the CEO of the American Hospital Association pointed out in an article: Articles for July 2021 UnitedHealth Group said it generated $9.2 billion in revenue in a single quarter of 2020 due to “widespread treatment deferrals.” That means they made a profit.”I missed my child's vaccination., Reduced access to opioid misuse treatment and Avoided emergency treatment due to cardiac arrest”
“But this doesn't solve everything,” he added. “Throughout the course of the pandemic, United Airlines pursued a number of changes to its policies to further limit insurance coverage for patients. United Airlines not only benefited from avoiding care, but also paid for it at the same time. We also actively worked to reduce the amount of nursing care required.
In other words, the health of UnitedHealth's stock price clearly has no correlation to the financial (or physical) health of Americans. Rather, the company, one of the world's most valuable companies and one of the biggest stock market players on the charts, is benefiting from an upturn in the volatile situation in the United States.
To an experienced analyst, this difference may seem obvious. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent economic recession, many observers have noted how disturbing this scene is. The stock market continues to rage Above all. “The stock market is not the economyRespected authors like Paul Krugman would therefore become a favorite phrase among pundits, emphasizing that ticker charts primarily reflect corporate profits and long-term forecasts above all else.
But far more perverse is the fact that the coronavirus market boom actually had perverse implications, for several obvious reasons. The federal government acted quickly to put money into the pockets of unemployed Americans, small businesses, and (yes) huge corporations. , through a flawed but effective program. The Federal Reserve kept interest rates low to stimulate investment. While the sectors hardest hit by the pandemic tended to revolve around small brick-and-mortar stores, technology-based sectors that can easily adapt to virtual or remote work fared well, leading to a broader share of the stock market. It played a much bigger role in driving performance.
As with the pandemic, what happened after the peak when it came to “stock market = economy” was even stranger and less discussed. discourse. (Exception: some new chatter That's when stock prices skyrocketed again in the wake of the January 6th uprising. ) As it turns out, Wall Street just recently bucked another historic prediction. According to pre-election CNN Business analysis, “In all but two elections since 1944, the incumbent party has won the race for the White House when the S&P 500 rises between late July and Halloween.” As we all know, despite the tough S&P health this fall, Democrats did not win.
To understand why Americans didn't go along with the S&P, we need only look back at their investment habits during the Biden era. There was a boom in meme stocks in early 2021, spurring a group of proles on Reddit to prematurely celebrate taking back the financial system for themselves. It didn't last long at all. There was a crypto mania that exploded that year, but it largely collapsed in 2022 as interest rates rose and fraudsters like Sam Bankman Freed were exposed. Legalized sports betting has mushroomed, and its addictive nature has fueled gambling addiction. catastrophic economic collapse Among avid gamblers. Some started buying physical gold bricks again and abandoned market-oriented investment products like exchange-traded funds.
These are where most retail traders turned during a decade of lining their own pockets thanks to government stimulus, and frankly, virtual fraud This is driven by the increasing digitalization of money and advances in AI. So we turn to another strange market development, one that has resulted from the artificial intelligence hype.
In the two years since ChatGPT's debut, there has been one really consistent market story. That means already well-capitalized Big Tech companies are keeping investors bullish (and driving overall stock market performance) simply by promising the wonders of AI. . Chipmaker Nvidia, never the most valuable stock, has soared after widespread recognition that its technology can help power AI training. Meta, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon have so far exceeded Other companies listed on the S&P and Nasdaq indexes have largely followed through on repeated promises about new AI goods, no matter how. expensiveresource-intensive, Unprofitabledeceptive, buggy, and frank Undeliverable These vows are true.
but ordinary american We're not hiding cash here. The richest oligarchs are doing it. (In fact, many Americans are against it. Build an AI data center near youa piece of infrastructure that Big Tech considers essential to its evaluation. ) About 62 percent of the country's population participates in the stock market at some level, but the numbers aren't as surprising as they seem: According to the Federal Reserve, in 2023, Owned by the richest 10% 93 percent Of the available shares Meanwhile, the bottom 50 percent owned just 1 percent. This is a record in chart disparity between the richest and poorest investors. Still, the Federal Reserve found that only 21 percent of U.S. households directly own any particular stock. Most people “expose” their investments to the market through their retirement portfolio, and few actually use products such as mutual funds.
The stock market has always been a rich man's game, but that has never been more clear than now. Americans are have a large amount of debtThey're willing to look for get-rich-quick schemes outside of Wall Street, especially as fewer companies are going public these days thanks to soaring interest rates and private equity. take more assets from the wider market. Hence the meme coin launched by Haliey “Hawk Tuah” Welch. Gain instant traction More than an exciting IPO. Legal gambling on elections and sports can total billions of dollars. Holding real gold may seem much more stable than a zigzag line on a chart.
Widespread apathy toward U.S. stocks doesn't seem to be going away anytime soon. as Bloomberg points out As of June, the record high for tech stocks was driven by another sector that normally props up financial markets: consumer discretionary goods, aka non-essentials, that Americans buy when they have some disposable income. It was a complete contrast to other products. The field is second worst The S&P 500 index is usually strong enough to guide the direction of the index, but the S&P 500 index has performed very well. Although overshadowed by technology hype, this number appears to be a more reliable indicator of how Americans feel.
but AI hype won't last forever without providing any real benefits or benefits. And as that sector declines, dragging Wall Street along with it, Americans who were invested elsewhere will likely recognize that plunge as old news. news.
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