DAVENPORT, Iowa — Following a dip in the stock market on Monday, some trending Google searches in the Quad Cities were stock market-related. For example, many people wanted to know if the market had crashed and why.
News 8 spoke with Bill Polley, the Director of Business Intelligence at the Quad Cities Chamber, and here’s what he had to say.
For starters, Polley said that what happened to the stock market was not enough to truly consider it a crash — rather it was a dip in the market. And to put minds at ease, he said there is no reason for panic.
The stock market dip was caused by collective, short-term interruptions and nothing that indicates a change in the economy as a whole, which he says is doing well both nationally and here in the Quad Cities. He added the area does as much international trade as larger metropolitan areas on the east and west coasts.
“Sometimes when the dollar is weak or strong on the world market compared to other currencies, that affects that Quad Cities market," Polley said.
The Labor Department released its monthly jobs report on Friday, which said that U.S. unemployment was up a bit. Job growth was not what was expected, with only about 114,000 jobs created in the U.S. in July. 180,000 new jobs is what experts expected. Following that on Sunday night, the Japanese market opened up and it was way down. And that spilled over into the U.S. on Monday.
However, this is not a long-term drop in the market, and little dips like this are expected from time to time and are not long-term or necessarily reflective of the economy.