US stocks have climbed amid the House vote to impeach Donald Trump, in spite of the president’s warnings of a market crash should he be censured.
The S&P 500 was up nearly 7 per cent compared to when Nancy Pelosi first announced the impeachment inquiry in September, and all signs point towards stocks headed higher on Thursday, according to CNBC.
So far, investors and markets have seemingly ignored the political firestorm that has consumed Mr Trump’s presidency and Washington, rallying higher and higher in spite of the grave accusations facing the American commander-in-chief.
The strength of the markets shows that the impeachment of Mr Trump may, economically, end up looking more like the event surrounding Bill Clinton’s impeachment in the 1990s, when the stock market continued to climb in spite of the sordid details that emerged surrounding the president’s affair and subsequent lies about that affair.
Mr Clinton is the only modern president aside from Mr Trump to be impeached, so it is difficult to assess whether impeachment proceeds have a major impact on the stock market. But, during the march towards impeaching Richard Nixon, stocks faltered. Nixon ultimately resigned before the censure.
But Mr Trump has warned repeatedly that an impeachment vote would backfire on Democrats, and force the stock market to dip.
In September, for instance, Mr Trump said: “If they actually did this the markets would crash. Do you think it was luck that got us to be the best Stock Market and Economy in our history. It wasn’t.”
Before that, Mr Trump had warned that “everybody would be very poor” if he were impeached and removed from office. Mr Trump is unlikely to be removed from office once the Senate takes up the articles of impeachment passed by the House on Wednesday.
That trial is expected to begin in early 2020.
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