U.S. Presidents and Comparative Stock Market Performance

http://www.endlessmetrics.com/blog/president-stock-performance.html

by makaimc • 7 years ago

64 34 7 years ago

seibelj• 7 years ago

It would be interesting to see Clinton's return extended one more year. He exited right before the dotcom bubble imploded.

seanmcdirmid2• 7 years ago

And if Bush could have left a year early, Obama would have taken the fall for the entire financial crisis (well, many Republicans blame him anyways).

maxxxxx• 7 years ago

Bush was pretty unlucky. 2 massive crashes during his presidency.

KennyFromIT• 7 years ago

This sounds like you're suggesting to p-hack.

"Let's just adjust our window because we know something is going to change and it would be interesting."

Meanwhile, the results are voided.

It's seemingly minor adjustments like thesr that have been causing tons of incorrect data to get published in science for way too long now.

tropo• 7 years ago

What is funny is that it wouldn't be fair to blame him for that inevitable crash, but it would be fair to blame him for the housing crash that happened much later. He changed the rules for mortgages. That took quite a long time to cause disaster.

markc• 7 years ago

Makes no sense to measure from day of taking office. With a 1 year offset, Trump's market goes from performing "very well" to the erratic mess that it has been ever since.

carlivar• 7 years ago

I've always been more curious about this stat when:

-President and Congress majority are same party (and by party)

-President and Congress majority are different party.

I suspect different parties are better, to reign in the excesses of each. But not sure. Maybe I'll do it some time.

cannonedhamster• 7 years ago

If the parties were working for the good of all Americans I think you'd be correct. The Republican party decided to literally impede anything, right or wrong that President Obama did. Democrats changed some rules for lower court justices because Republicans refused to even vote against judges just to claim Obama was leaving seats vacant. That's not governance, that's plain impeding government from doing it's job by people who don't believe government should exist. You cannot have a functional government when people meant to govern it don't believe it should exist.

sonnyblarney• 7 years ago

Stock variation doesn't really say much other than probably a degree of general confidence about how much profits companies can take.

How about actual corporate earnings? (Thereby normalizing for wacky p/e ratios?)

And what about bond yields? (Because bonds and stocks are the primary assets, valuations flow from one to the other)

Interest rates? (Because cheaper Fed rates entail easy money)

GDP? (Because that's a measure of the economy)

Housing prices? (Because that's a measure of consumer spending, i.e. 'the rest of us')

Housing starts? (A measure of business confidence in consumer)

Employment? (A good measure of overall health)

Inflation? (A variety of factors but it puts the others in perspective)

Instead of this 'stock prices' thing they should show us all that for perspective.

batterseapower• 7 years ago

Allegedly, stocks which are highly exposed to government spending outperform their low-gov-spending peers under a Dem presidency, and underperform during a GOP one: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1572801

asaph• 7 years ago

It's too bad this analysis was done against the Dow Jones Industrial Average which is a price weighted index of only 30 large cap stocks and widely considered to be a poor indicator. Something like the S&P 500 index would would have been a better choice though it doesn't go as far back as the DJIA.

computerphage• 7 years ago

Although, the Dow doesn't really go back that far either in the sense that it swaps out stocks occasionally, which could cause spurious conclusions to be drawn if not accounted for.

kgwgk• 7 years ago

The S&P 500 does also swap stocks, and more often :-)

tutfbhuf• 7 years ago

"though it doesn't go as far back as the DJIA"

That's not a big of a deal, it has been calculated backwards using historical data.

Leary• 7 years ago

A cut in the corporate tax rate shockingly increases equity value.

cfarm• 7 years ago

I wonder if most policies put in place during a president's term actually affect the next term.

desdiv• 7 years ago

"Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans."

- Robert F. Kennedy

eaenki• 7 years ago

The Kennedys speeches were on another level

swarnie_• 7 years ago

What a difference 50 years have made.

B1FF_PSUVM• 7 years ago

That's not badly put, but aircraft carriers don't grow on trees, and it seems that historians correlate GDP with military success.

Which has been bumming out people for much longer than that example of Greece becoming a province of the Roman Republic.

krzjn• 7 years ago

It seems to me that these results don't take into account the fact that presidents inherit the policies of the previous terms. Some presidents can ride on the coat tails of former policies and take the credit or blame just because they're the ones serving. It can take as long as 8 years before the consequences of bad policy can rear its ugly head.

U.S. Presidents and Comparative Stock Market Performance

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