The economic outlook for 2019 can be looked at in one of two ways – through the scope of the pessimistic geo-political noise dominating the headlines, or via the time-tested evidence our economy is spitting out indicating continued strength for U.S. markets. We at Clover Capital choose the latter, as do many of this nation’s CEOs surveyed by the Business Roundtable CEO Economic Outlook Survey. Jamie Dimon, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Chairman of Business Roundtable said, “The BRT CEO survey shows that confidence among America’s business leaders remains strong.”

The lingering trade dispute with China may, or may not, get resolved. The nation with the world's largest oil reserves, Venezuela, can't resolve their internal power struggle, global economic growth is slowing, particularly in the Eurozone and China. Stirred together, many others had predicted that this was supposed to signal the start of a global recession that would be dragging down the U.S. economy by now. Not us! As we predicted at the start of the year in the Clover Capital 2019 Economic Outlook, the American economic locomotive keeps on chugging.