Weak economic data vs. government intervention
Unemployment jumped as expected and other economic data is still very weak. The latest reading for Heavy Truck Sales plunged -43% year-over-year:
It's tempting to see this as a bullish sign for stocks. The last 2 times this happened was after the early-1980 recession and the 2007-2009 bear market, hence why stocks soared over the next year:
But it's hard to put much weight on this given that the sample size is so low. In fact, if you relax the parameters you would include the late-2007 case, which certainly was NOT bullish for stocks.
The government is ramping up fiscal and monetary stimulus efforts to fight the coronavirus-driven recession. Monetary stimulus efforts have caused total assets at the Fed to soar:
The only other similar case came in October 2008, just as stocks fell off a cliff.
Overall, economic data is neither a bullish nor bearish factor right now since comparing today vs. historical recessions doesn't make a lot of sense. Most recessions are very different from each other, and a pandemic-driven recession has been unprecedented post-WWII. That's why certain economic indicators suggest that the worst is over, while others suggest that there is more to come. This is typically what happens when you end up with low sample size data.