The S&P 500 Is at an All Time High--But Markets Still Performed Far Better Under Obama Than Trump
Before the Fed lowered its target interest rate range on Wednesday, Donald Trump was already on Twitter, touching on two of his favorite topics: how the Fed doesn't lower interest rates enough and that the stock market's performance is thanks to him and his Republican pals.
The connection between a president and equity markets isn't straightforward. Many factors—the general health of the economy, investors sentiment, interest rates, financial stimulus, and global business conditions, for example—affect how stocks perform. But presidents also aren't unimportant.
"Policies may or may not be helpful for economic growth," says Kenneth Orr, CEO of investment research firm and value investment fund manager KORR Acquisitions Group. "Policies are led by the President and his Administration, but Congress must pass laws and budgets to affect those policies."
And so, as Fortune did in early June, we decided to take a look at how the markets performed during the Administrations of Barack Obama and Trump. We downloaded historical information on the Dow, S&P 500, Nasdaq, and Russell 2000 indexes from Yahoo Finance. Then we compared the same periods for both presidents: from inauguration on January 20 to Oct. 31 in their third year of office.
More: https://fortune.com/2019/11/01/trump-obama-markets-comparison-s-and-p-500-dow-nasdaq-economy/?fbclid=IwAR0CqYtuDzmwH5hYaUWz0aWyo7ggCCzTztEcfcXDuZLxCIEu4TlaxFym064
