I’ve been fielding a lot of questions lately about what the market will do if either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton is elected as the next President of the United States.
But first, some presidential trivia to help you sound smarter at your next cocktail party or backyard BBQ:
- How many US Presidents have we had since WWII? (12)
- How many were Democrat? (6) How many were Republican? (6)
But here’s the harder part. If I asked you to rank order the presidents by stock market return during their presidency, how would rank them? All the business-friendly Republicans at the top and all the regulation-heavy Democrats at the bottom? Nope:
The reality is that the US President can neither legislate a bull market nor veto a bear market. He/she can make bold promises or scare the populace, but in the end, the US economy expands and contracts based on the financial behavior of the other 318,900,000 citizens here in the US. People adjust, corporations shift, and the economy marches on, regardless of who is in the White House.
Remind your (sometimes crazy) brother-in-law of this next time he says that Donald Trump ________ or Hillary Clinton_________.
