President Trump impeached — here’s what it could mean for markets

Wall Street shrugged off headlines of President Donald Trump‘s impeachment.

Stocks rallied to record highs on Thursday a day after Trump became the third president to be impeached by the House.

Here’s what five experts expect now.

Libby Cantrill, head of public policy at Pimco, says impeachment could still impact the markets.

“On impeachment in particular, the market has been right to be pretty sanguine about it. I think the market was expecting the House to impeach and the Senate to acquit. If that obviously doesn’t happen then that would be a market surprise. … There are two ways that impeachment could inform policy outcomes. One is on how does this inform President Trump’s reaction function? Does this affect his willingness to sign that budget deal into law? Is he going to try to change the narrative around trade or immigration, things that he can pull the lever on without Congress?”

James Paulsen of Leuthold Group says the markets are looking past impeachment and toward earnings.

“The next biggest thing for the market is going to be earnings and they’re either going to turn up here, they’re going to accelerate, following better information coming out of the economy across the globe here of late or they’re not. I think they’re going to start to accelerate and that could bring another run again because the one negative all year has been decelerating earnings or flattish earnings trends.”

Andy Sieg, head of Merrill Lynch Wealth Management, says the trend is higher from here.

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“We think the trend is your friend. We’re very bullish on the market right now and I think it’s for reasons that we’ve been talking about all morning. It’s the economy, earnings and the Fed. But one of the things we have insight to through our 15,000 financial advisors is just what’s the sentiment among Main Street investors today and the sentiment is very encouraging.”

Chris Campbell, chief strategist at Duff & Phelps, sees that the moves past this should give clarity to one sector.

“There’s a lot more certainty, certainly in the health-care industry and sector so I think that’s going to be great and it tees up a conversation on infrastructure and it tees up a conversation on broader health-care challenges.”

Krishna Guha, equity analyst at Evercore, says fears of a progressive Democratic president have been allayed for now.

“What the market is telling you today is we’ve seen this movie already. We know how it’s going to end. … It’s almost certain he gets acquitted from the Senate, and fairly quickly, too, so we know where this is going. And we also know that the polling data is telling us that it’s not a game changer as far as the election year is concerned. If anything more recently, President Trump seems to have consolidated his position in the polls including on the question of impeachment so if you’re that type of investor who was worried about a progressive Democrat coming in at the end of next year, then that’s another reason to feel more sanguine about the situation right now.”

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