With the Federal Reserve hiking rates, big regional banks teetering and sometimes failing, and stocks waging a nice comeback after last year’s plunge, the first half of 2023 has been a pivotal and perplexing period in financial markets. Big tech stocks have been hot and so have money-market funds.
Is this a stock market rally for suckers, or is a new bull market underway? Who is more in control, the bears or the bulls?
MarketWatch wants to know, who are the people impacting markets the most in 2023? Our newsroom has started working to figure this out, but we need help from our readers. We want your input and guidance before we launch The MarketWatch 50 list of the most influential people in markets at the end of October.
Who are the traders, investors, policy makers, corporate chiefs, crypto players and influencers who are impacting markets the most in 2023? Please submit your suggestions here.
The MarketWatch 50 will be made up of people whose actions, work and opinions have impacted markets. These are the people who help move the prices of stocks, bonds, currencies and commodities; influence the behavior and strategies of market participants; and help determine how markets function.
The impressive rally in big tech stocks in the first half of the year has been fueled by investor enthusiasm about generative artificial intelligence. No company has benefited more from the AI frenzy than Nvidia. Run by CEO Jensen Huan, the graphics-chip maker is poised to power the AI boom and has seen its stock soar by 160% so far this year and flirted with a trillion-dollar market capitalization. The gains of just seven stocks — Apple
AAPL,
Alphabet
GOOG,
Microsoft
MSFT,
Amazon
AMZN,
Meta Platforms
META,
Tesla
TSLA,
and Nvidia
NVDA,
— have accounted for much of the U.S. stock market’s rise in 2023. Their outsized impact could help make the case for their leaders to wind up on the list.
Who is more influential in markets today, Elon Musk or Jerome Powell?
PLEASE CLICK HERE TO TELL US WHO YOU THINK SHOULD BE ON THE MARKETWATCH 50 2023.
Musk continues to be one of the most consequential CEOs in the market. Facing many challenges, he is working to engineer a stock market comeback at Tesla, revamp Twitter and make his lofty $44 billion acquisition price make sense, while also piloting SpaceX after its Starship rocket launched and exploded over Texas in April.
Powell, meantime, is trying to engineer a soft landing for the economy after his Federal Reserve allowed inflation to spike by leaving monetary policy too loose for too long. Powell has overseen 10 interest rate hikes in just over a year in an effort to get inflation back down to the Fed’s inflation target of 2%. The rapid rate hikes have made bonds and even cash a viable savings alternative in 2023 and wreaked havoc on the balance sheets of some mismanaged regional banks.
But you don’t need to be a CEO or prominent policymaker to impact the psychology of markets. Last year, The MarketWatch 50 list included influencers like Morgan Housel, whose personal finance book has now sold more than 2 million copies, and Michelle Singletary, whose “Color of Money,” is among the Washington Post’s most-read columns.
Here’s how we do this. MarketWatch’s newsroom collects and reviews each nomination — every single one — and will circulate the strong and interesting candidates among our staff for consideration. You can tell us in the nomination form why a candidate for The MarketWatch 50 is having a big impact on markets in 2023.
In addition, MarketWatch’s reporters will talk to experts and sources, and follow-up on nominations. In the end, a list-selection committee comprising MarketWatch’s group editors and the editor in chief will determine the final list.
We are giving you the summer to think about this. Submissions are due by Sept. 5. MarketWatch looks forward to hearing from you.
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