In This Article:
December 30, 2024 (Maple Hill Syndicate) As of December 27, Joe Biden ranks ninth among U.S. presidents (post 1928) in stock-market performance. That's not likely to change in the last few days of his term.
Bill Clinton remains the champion, with a 17.49% annual return for the Standard & Poor's 500 Total Return Index during his presidency in January 1993 to January 2001. He managed to balance the federal budget (with help from the Internet boom), and to avoid major wars and recessions.
President-Elect Donald Trump, in his first term, saw the stock market return 15.95% per year. As he likes to point out, he was doing even better until the Covid-19 pandemic threw a wrench into the economy.
Trump ranks third in stock-market performance, behind Barack Obama at 16.25%, and ahead of Gerald Ford at 15.57%.
Under Biden, stocks have returned an average of 13.49% per year from January 20, 2021 through December 27, 2024. That puts him comfortably ahead of tenth-place President Jimmy Carter (12.40%). But he is unlikely to catch up to eighth-place finisher George H.W. Bush who presided over a 14.71% return.
My tally goes back to the inauguration of Herbert Hoover in 1929, and covers 16 Presidents. I didn't go back further in history because I wanted to use the Standard & Poor's 500 Total Return Index as my gauge, and it didn't exist earlier. Figures are total returns including dividends and capital gains.
Three Who Lost
Three Presidents saw the stock market decline during their terms. Stocks fell 0.64% per year with Richard Nixon at the helm, and 3.82% per year when George W. Bush was President.
Herbert Hoover served at the beginning of the Great Depression, and saw stocks fall 30.82% per year from his inauguration in 1929 through the end of his term in January 1933.
Of these three Presidents, two served only a single term. Nixon was reelected in 1972 but had to resign in August 1974 because of the Watergate scandal.
Democratic Heroes
Occupying the 11th through 13th spots on the stock-market performance tally are three gods in the Democratic Party pantheon, Franklin D. Roosevelt (12.15%), Lyndon Johnson (11.23) and John Kennedy (9.82%).
Roosevelt, of course, had to content with the Great Depression. Johnson's term was marred by heavy casualties in the Vietnam War and public division about the war. Returns under Kennedy were dampened by the Cuban missile crisis, a steel strike and a flash crash in 1962.
Party Politics
Each party, naturally, claims that prosperity is more likely when it is in charge. In the stock market, the record doesn't give a clear edge to either.