But now Ackman was in the tank for Trump. “My thinking is as follows,” Ackman said at a New York Times conference on Thursday afternoon. “The United States is the greatest business in the world and it’s been unmanaged for a very long period of time. We now have a businessman as the president and he has power because Republicans control Congress. He’s going to launch a major infrastructure program. He’s going to take corporate taxes down to a sensible level and get rid of loopholes. He’s going to get a lot done and nothing has gotten done in a very long period of time. And if you are an activist investor, you want someone to come in, take over and get things that need to get done, done.”
It turns out that Ackman is not alone on Wall Street in suddenly being able to see Trump’s virtues. Consider the extraordinary rally of the Dow Jones Industrial Average to nearly 19,000, an all-time high, after stock futures took an initial panicky dip when the shocking election results became known early Wednesday morning. Speaking at the same Times conference, Lloyd Blankfein, the Chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs and an outspoken supporter of Hillary Clinton—his firm paid her $675,000 for three appearances in 2013—also found some Trump religion, despite being featured in an anti-global establishment advertisement that Trump ran a few days before the election (one that some commentators suggested was anti-Semitic).
Blankfein said that Trump’s proposed economic policies are “very asset and market-friendly” and that the stock market had figured that fact out very quickly by the time it opened on Wednesday morning after “the jarring prospect” of a Trump presidency had driven futures down some 900 points as it was becoming increasingly clear that Trump would win. In fact, after languishing for years in the aftermath of the financial crisis, Wall Street bank stocks have been on a tear since Trump’s election: JPMorganChase is trading at an all-time high and Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are trading at their 52-week highs. (Blankfein’s Goldman stock has increased by about $70 million since November 8.)
Join the conversation as a VIP Member