Why are stock prices going up when the economy is in ruins? Here’s some helpful context

It’s the question on every investor’s mind.

Google “Why is the stock market going up?” and you get 2.8 billion answers. Yet many of them (we haven’t checked them all) ignore or minimize a significant factor. The once-a-century strangeness of this downturn has combined with the way stock indexes are calculated and an element of sheer chance to produce this apparent contradiction. Understand how that happens, and it all makes sense. Sort of.

There’s a lot to make sense of. Back in January, the economy was growing at a respectable 2.1% annual rate, unemployment was a minuscule 3.6%, and Americans were