Stock Market Performance And The Presidents

With the Presidents Day holiday approaching I thought it was a good idea to write an article showing the performance of the stock market during the terms of Presidents since Richard Nixon. I decided to start with Nixon because I was born in 1969. Performance numbers for Presidents before Ronald Reagan are based on the performance of the Dow Jones Industrial Index which can be obtained by reading a study by Colin Cieszynski at CMC Markets and performance numbers during and after Reagan will be based on the S&P 500 Index.

Richard Nixon (1969-1974): Annual Return of -3.5% & Total Return of -19.7%.

Gerald Ford (1974-1977): Annual Return of +13.5% & Total Return of +32.6%.

Jimmy Carter (1977-1981): Annual Return of -1% & Total Return of -4%.

Ronald Reagan (1981-1989): Annual Return of +10.6% & Total Return of +124.5%.

George H. W. Bush (1989-1993): Annual Return of +14.5% & Total Return of +71.9%.

Bill Clinton (1993-2001): Annual Return of +17.4% & Total Return of +262.9%.

George W. Bush (2001-2009): Annual Return of -3.9% & Total Return of -27.4%

Barack Obama (2009-Present): Annual Return of +19.5% & Total Return of +144.8%.

So there you go, not too many surprises except maybe that President George Bush the elder was not re-elected despite having pretty good performance numbers and that his son was re-elected with such terrible performance numbers. I would say, going forward that the main thing to watch now is whether President Obama can top the unbelievable stock market performance of President Clinton. Time will tell.

Note: Performance numbers for the S&P 500 are derived from the performance of Vanguard's S&P 500 Fund (VFINX) and the S&P 500 Index ETF (SPY). Performance stats courtesy of  Longrundata.com, Buyupside, and CMC Markets.
Disclaimer: All articles are written as an opinion of the writer or writers. The contributors on this website are not professional investment advisors. These articles are written to share investing ideas that may be of interest to the reader. Always seek the advice of a professional investment advisor before investing.

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