Badly flawed implied comparison with Obama. Election day in '08 happened during an accelerating financial crisis that precluded viewing the financial and stock markets positively.
Neither TARP nor the Stimulus would have an impact on the stock market until the spring of '09. THAT is when the current bull market began.
Trump inherited a far better economy and stock market than did Obama. Period.
But Trump's 'preference' should tell you all you need to know about his intellectual dishonesty AND about the fact, RE the economy and the stock market, Trump woke up on third base and thought he'd hit a triple.
S&P 500 Has Performed Far Worse Under Trump Than Under Obama
When it comes to talking himself up, Trump in particular has compared himself to Barack Obama. So, how do the two presidents measure up in terms of growth in major indexes, measured between their inauguration and May 31 of their third year in office?
The short answer is that Trump has quite a way to go. Under Obama, the S&P 500 grew by 56.4%. The Dow Jones Industrials Average was up 50.6% and the Nasdaq, 92.9%.
The numbers under Trump were 21.4% for the S&P 500, 25.2% for the Dow, and 34.2% for Nasdaq.
“The first three years of the Obama years is confidence returning to the market and investors emerging out of the bunker mentality of the financial crisis,” said Christopher Mitchell, assistant professor of politics and international relations at Mount Holyoke College.
“In President Trump’s case, his very pro-business attitude unleashed some animal spirits in markets and for business leaders,” said Mark Hamrick, senior economic analyst at Bankrate.com. “But he has also been unpredictable. His decisions on trade have been negative for business sentiment and also for the real economy.”
An example of the latter was the announcement of additional tariffs on Mexico and a negative reaction by the markets. The big tool he once had to stimulate stocks—a tax cut—is already used up. “We saw the impact of 2017’s tax reform cushion the U.S. from the tariff fallout that gripped the rest of the world in 2018,” said Max Gokhman, head of asset allocation at Pacific Life Fund Advisors. “Unfortunately, that transitory tax reform boost was already going to make year-over-year comparisons challenging and, now, should all the announced tariffs be fully enacted, the U.S. economy will face a $230 billion tax. This net tax increase would likely deal a fatal blow to the aging expansion, where not even the most skilled central banker could resuscitate it.”
That could make the Trump-Obama comparisons uglier and not necessarily something to trot out at election time.
And yet, there’s another factor. “Overall confidence in the economy has not changed since Trump has become president, but it’s flipped,” Mitchell said. The number of Democrats who thought the economy was good under Obama is about the same as the Republicans who think the same now.
In one way, campaigning against Obama—who can’t return to the presidency—is easy for Trump. Running against the heady growth of that stock market might end up a lot harder.
Some prefer to track stock market performance from Inauguration Day, and CNN has a handy online tracker that already does this for Trump and the last few presidents. Trump argues that one should measure from Election Day, and while he surely does so mainly because it makes him look better, he also happens to be right. Market indices are forward-looking metrics, and were already reflecting investors’ opinions on a Trump presidency on Nov. 9, 2016
AI
