The stock market has risen about 9 percent since the election of Donald Trump with near a $2 trillion increase in wealth. Is this the start of a big bull market rally? Investors are rightly euphoric over President Trump’s pro-business/pro-investor policies. But Wall Street is coming to grips with the political reality that gridlock is the default position in Washington. Democrats have announced they are preparing an all-out defense against Trumpism as if they were trying to repel the Normandy Invasion. So the market has been jittery in recent weeks, rising on Trump successes (such as the regulation roll back) and falling into despair when his economic agenda seems bogged down or he pursues bearish policies like tariffs on Mexico. To get a sense of where the market is headed, it’s wise to look at the historical parallel of the early years of another presidential disruptor: President Ronald Reagan. Mr. Trump can learn from Mr. Reagan’s mistakes and successes.

The Dow hit 20,000 on January 25. What has been called "the Trump Bounce" should now be redefined as "the Trump Moon Bounce." Stocks are up by more than 2,000 points since the Trump election -- a 10 percent gain in mere weeks.

All of Washington seems to be in cardiac arrest over news reports late last week that Donald Trump is planning a budget featuring $10 trillion in cuts over the next decade. We can only hope and pray that the reports are accurate. This is an enterprise that has been borrowing $1 trillion a year for the past decade and is expected to continue to do so for years and decades to come. The national indebtedness will soon exceed $20 trillion, and everyone in Washington is in denial about this metastasizing cancer cell when they should be ordering radiation therapy before it kills off the economy. Yes, even in Washington, $10 trillion is a whole lot of money. It's roughly equal to the entire amount of debt that was accumulated by Barack Obama in eight years. The scaremongers say that cuts of this magnitude would have devastating effects on social programs and vital federal services. Wrong. Even with this overdue downsizing, the federal government would still grow in size over the next decade. It just wouldn't grow nearly as quickly as it is projected to if nothing at all is done.

Back in early 2015 oil and gas company Conoco-Phillips requested a permit from the Obama administration to launch an oil drilling project in Alaska. The energy project, called the Greater Moose’s Tooth Development, is located within the National Petroleum Reserve and would create thousands of jobs in an economically depressed area of the state. The project has the full approval of the local community, and poses little threat to the environment in a sparsely populated region.

On election night at around 6 p.m. a Hillary Clinton political operative went on TV and smugly opined that she believed they had a 95 percent chance of winning. Wow, 95 percent. In statistics we call that a very high level of certainty. But of course five hours later the woman was in tears and the 1 in 20 long shot named Donald Trump came in.

People are leaving the Hillary-supporting states in droves.

When Donald Trump said last week that he will double the American growth rate, his skeptics scoffed. The left doesn’t think 4 percent growth is possible because they never came close to that target under President Obama.

The latest spin out of Washington is that stock market declines over the last 10 days are due to Donald Trump’s surge in the polls. Well it is true that Wall Street tends to hate change — even when it’s positive. And if Donald Trump is anything, it is a change agent that will rattle the cages in Washington, and perhaps on Wall Street. Investors didn’t respond at all well to President Reagan until his policies were put in place, the economy rocketed forward, and only then did the greatest bull market expansion in American history get launched in 1982.

Hillary Clinton's cascading email scandal has overshadowed the other bombshell from last week: ObamaCare's exploding premiums. Were these honest mistakes or was there a health care coverup here as well?