March 28, 2019: Trump Makes Up Numbers Again - the Stock Market

 

3/28/19: Time to check on the stock market again to see what magic President Trump has wrought. Okay. The Dow is up a bit today, closing at 25,717. That means, since the market closed at 19,804 on January 19, 2017, President Obama’s last full day in office, the Dow Jones is up 29.9%. 

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“The Stock Market would be down at least 10,000 points by now.” 

President Trump

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By comparison, that Kenyan guy (who wasn’t really a Kenyan guy, which Trump had only just admitted, before taking over the White House his orange self) had done all the damage to our economy he could. The day Obama took over, with the market in a catastrophic slide, the Dow stood at 8,281. It was still sliding and would drop to 6,547 by March 9, 2009, before bottoming out. Then Commie Obama (who wasn’t a commie) or Muslim Obama (not a Muslim) took charge. By March 28, 2011, the Dow had risen to 12,220, for a gain of 47.6%. 

With that number in mind, let’s stop a moment and consider a presidential tweet from February 20. According to President Twitter Thumbs, had Democrats won the 2016 election, “the Stock Market would be down at least 10,000 points by now.”

 

You could look this up if you had slightly more intellectual curiosity than the average Halloween pumpkin. Donald J. Trump does not. Looking at the last seventeen presidents, going back to 1929, we see that when Herbert Hoover (a Republican) was in office the market dived 82.1 percent. Richard M. Nixon was second worst, with the market falling 28.3 percent. Plus, he got impeached. George W. Bush was third worst, with a plunge of 26.5%. 

The worst Democratic president, in terms of market performance, was Jimmy Carter, who saw the Dow stagnate and drop 0.7 percent. Since 1929, every other Democrat registered gains: John F. Kennedy (15.8%), Lyndon B. Johnson (26.1%) and Harry Truman (75.2%). Three of the top four performers, if we’re going to let presidents claim credit for market gains, would be Obama (by the end of his second term: 148.3%), Franklin D. Roosevelt (198.6%) and Bill Clinton (228.9%). 

Plus, Bill got impeached.

 

Calvin Coolidge, a Republican, finished first, with the market exploding to a gain of 230.5% during his time in office. 

Or course, he got lucky and left office on March 4, 1929, with the Great Crash a few months down the road.

Best stock returns ever: Calvin Coolidge.
He got out just in time to miss the Great Crash of 1929.