Market Watch: Economists give candidates “F”

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With the looming, monthly jobs report due out tomorrow, the market took a wait & see approach today with moderate gains.  The healthcare sector saw the most advances as the S&P 500 closed above the 2,100 level for the first time since April.

Many investors on Wall Street are also taking the same wait & see approach until after the U.S. Presidential election in November.

But according to two dozen economists surveyed by Bankrate.com, all three of the major Presidential candidates’ economic plans are:

“Half-baked, and that there is a general lack of attention to serious economic debate during the campaign.”

Half of the twenty four economists surveyed gave the field of Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump a grade of “F,” with most of the other economists giving the the candidate group a “D.”

According to Mark Hamrick, senior economic analyst at Bankrate:

“There was kind of a universal observation that the political candidates are not being pressed on economic issues sufficiently. When we try to measure financial literacy or economic literacy, the U.S. isn’t at the top of the list. People are looking for a Twitter-version solution of things instead of thinking about well thought-out plans. There still may be plenty of time for these solutions to be presented, but it doesn’t feel that any of these solutions are as thoughtful and elegant as we’d like to see.”

Here are the final numbers from Thursday, June 2nd on Wall Street:

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 17,838.56  (+48.89 / +0.27%)

NASDAQ: 4,971.36 (+19.11/ +0.39%)

S&P 500: 2,105.26  (+5.93/ +0.28%)