Worst Market Since Reagan Greets Obama Before Election

[Purveyor]

By Whitney Kisling and Inyoung Hwang

With only six months before the election, the stock market is giving President Barack Obama the worst returns since Ronald Reagan was seeking a second term.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (SPX) is up 1.3 percent since Mitt Romney’s campaign began 12 months ago, compared with average gains of 12 percent for incumbents who won re-election starting with Harry S. Truman, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Stocks are also advancing less than the 7 percent minimum enjoyed by George H.W. Bush, Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford, who lost their bids for a second term. The only one with a worse equity performance heading into the vote was Reagan.

Weakening equity markets after a three-year rally underscore the challenge faced by Obama, who took office during the worst recession in seven decades and has presided over 11 quarters of growth. While share returns do little to foretell presidential contests, the 8.7 percent decline in the S&P 500 since April 2 may be a sign investors are losing confidence in an accelerating recovery even as they anticipate more central bank spending to stimulate the economy.

“Fiscal policy is maxed out,” Wayne Lin, a money manager at Baltimore-based Legg Mason Inc., said in a telephone interview on May 16. His firm oversees $643.3 billion. “In past years, we actually had the budget to be able to do it. We had the economic growth that generated tax revenues to be able to support any kind of fiscal policy. There was a lot more flexibility in enacting fiscal policy in prior years.”

MORE...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-20/worst-market-since-reagan-greets-obama-in-elections-from-1948.html

[Drunken Irishman]

1. Sorry, but this article sucks...

For starters, the S&P 500 is just one market. The Dow and Nasdaq are two other markets not mentioned in this article.

Secondly, the article even mentions the S&P 500 had its best first-quarter gain since 1998.

Thirdly, it's impossible to compare past presidents to what Obama saw with the stock market - the entire market collapsed in '08 and early '09 and it's climbed remarkably well since May, 2009. So, while the growth leading into an election year, or since Romney's campaign began, is pointless in the entire scheme of things. That window just doesn't work when you're dealing with dramatically different markets seen in '04, '96 and '92 - where the market never saw the catastrophic decline we witnessed from January '08 to May '09.

Finally, the market's instability the past couple months is more directly tied to Europe than anything here at home. That's not Obama's fault.

So, this article is really stretching their numbers.

[dennis4868]

2. Great post

Thanks!

[Drunken Irishman]

3. Thank you! :)

[Rosa Luxemburg]

4. Why did you post this? Cleaning after Republican deregulation?