Trump reportedly says it's a 'tremendous opportunity to buy' stocks as they teeter on bear-market territory
- President Donald Trump said on Tuesday evening that the current stock-market environment offers a "tremendous opportunity to buy," according to a report.
- The major US stock markets are in or teetering on the brink of bear markets.
- Trump has repeatedly pointed to the stock market's performance as a report card for how he's doing in office.
President Donald Trump put on his market-strategist cap on Christmas Day and said investors could view the current environment as buying opportunity.
"I have great confidence in our companies," he told reporters on Tuesday, according to a Reuters report.
"We have companies, the greatest in the world, and they're doing really well. They have record kinds of numbers. So I think it's a tremendous opportunity to buy."
Trump's comments come as the major averages in the US plunged more than 2% on Monday, making for their worst Christmas Eve on record. The dismal performance came one day after Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said in an unusual statement that he called leaders of the six largest US banks to confirm they were in solid condition.
Those losses ran the major averages to the brink of bear market territory, with the S&P 500 closing about 20% below its all-time high from late September. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and Nasdaq Composite are down 19.1% and 23.9% from their respective record peaks.
Read more: Trump lashes out at the Fed, says it's the 'only problem our economy has'
Trump has previously said he considers the stock market's performance to be indicative of his success in office, as a sort of report card for his presidency.
"You live by the sword, you die by the sword, to a certain extent," he told the AP in early 2017.
This isn't the first time someone in the Trump administration has made a stock-market call. Trump's son Eric earlier this year said the February sell-off appeared to be a "great period to buy." The S&P 500 rallied roughly 14% to a record high of 2940.91 in the more than seven months following his call before rolling over.
Despite the recent downturn, the S&P 500 is up 3.9% since Trump took office in January of 2017, and up almost 10% since Election Day in November of 2016.
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