Americans are more likely to go on shopping sprees when the stock market is rising — why that’s a bad thing MarketWatch 1/25/2021 Call it the Great Disconnect of 2020. While more than 30 million Americans were unemployed at some point during the pandemic, the Dow Jones Industrial Average S&P 500 Index and NASDAQ Composite all hit all-time highs last year and continue to rally. This gives many Americans a false sense of security about the country’s economic fortunes, researchers say. In fact, consumers have responded to such gains by going on credit card spending splurges, regardless of whether they invest in stocks or not.