By Jacob Bogage

WASHINGTON, July 10 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump began this week with an Oval Office first: ringing the stock market’s opening bell.

The moment captured a defining feature of his second term. Trump has increasingly cast Wall Street’s gains as a measure of his presidency, treating record stock prices as proof that his policies are working even as many Americans remain squeezed by high living costs and millions own no stock at all.

It is a political and economic calculus that some economists say risks conflating the fortunes of ​financial markets with the broader experience of U.S. households, roughly four in 10 of which do not have money in the markets.

Trump has pointed to rising equities as validation…