NEW YORK—Wall Street is hurting, and Main Street doesn’t care. It’s got burgers and cars to buy.
Big losses in stock markets around the world this year have the wingtip-set fretting, but regular consumers across the United States are confident enough to open their wallets and spend more. It’s an about-face from the early years of the economic recovery, which began in 2009, when stocks and big banks were soaring but many on Main Street felt like they were getting left behind.
“It’s almost like a stock market is a different animal,” says Earl Stewart, who owns a Toyota dealership in North Palm Beach, Florida, far from the roiling markets in New York, Frankfurt and Shanghai. “We’re not seeing any of the negativity.”
The stock market’s malaise hasn’t affected his customers, at least not yet. Sales for the past year have been the best since 2007, and he had record profits in 2015.
The divergence underway between Main Street and Wall Street highlights the difference between the U.S. stock market and the economy. The stock market’s worries are centered on things like the strength of foreign economies, such as how much China’s sharp slowdown will hurt exporters and businesses in other countries. Low oil prices are crushing the shares of big energy companies and the big banks that lend to them—but leaving consumers with more money to spend after they fill up their car with cheap gasoline.
These forces have dragged the Standard & Poor’s 500 index down 12.5 percent from its peak in May. Foreign stocks have lost double that. Hedge funds, which cater to the wealthiest and biggest investors, are also struggling. They lost money in January and got off to their worst start of a year since 2008, according to Hedge Fund Research.
