Is there too much optimism in US equity markets?

4 July special

Ahead of the US celebrating its 4 July national day, Investment Week looks at the outlook for US equities and whether the market’s outperformance since its March lows is justified or if investors have become overly optimistic.

The S&P 500 index is up 3% year to date, having recovered from a decline of more than 20% in mid-March as the coronavirus pandemic wreaked havoc on global equity markets, while the MSCI World index is up 1.3% according to data from FE fundinfo. Does Donald Trump have any chance of re-election? US growth and tech stocks have been some of the beneficiaries of the economic conditions of lockdown, with the Nasdaq returning 26.5% year to date, up 54.5% since 16 March. US equity portfolio specialist at T. Rowe Price Eric Papesh noted that despite "a lot of optimism currently being priced...