I thought readers might be curious to see a comparison of the performance of U.S. stocks after each president’s first 17 months in office. The graph below shows that in President Obama’s first 17 months in office, Feb-02-2009 to Nov-21-2010, large-cap stocks (measured as the S&P 500) rose 45%, and small-cap stocks (measured as the Russell 2000) rose 60%. Not too shabby.
The graph shows that stocks have also risen during President Trump’s first 17 months in office, Feb-02-2017 to Nov-21-2018. The Russell 2000 has risen 9% and the S&P 500 is up 16%.
Conclusion: In President Obama’s first 17 months in office, large-cap stock returns were 2.8 times larger than under President Trump, and small-cap stock returns were 6.5 times larger.
