Does the US have reason to celebrate 4 July this year?

Political and economic fireworks could spell trouble across the pond

The US stockmarket has spent the large part of 11 years outpacing its peers across the globe as high-quality tech stocks have unrelentingly dominated.

Even though history's longest bull market came to an abrupt halt in March as a result of pandemic-induced lockdowns, the S&P 500 index has still managed to keep its head above water, having gained 2.8% during the first half of the year. But this has by no means been a smooth path. The US market suffered a record-breaking 20% freefall over 16 days and a short, sharp snapback soon afterwards, which left many investors worried that a swift V-shaped recovery was being priced in with little room for error. Is there too much optimism in US equity markets? The flipside of the coin is that...