Why You Should Focus on Market Cycles, Not Election Cycles
Special Report

Focus on Market Cycles, Not Election Cycles

October 16, 2023

Set against global geopolitical uncertainty and the start of a contentious election cycle, it’s hard to stay focused on the positives.

The 2024 primary-to-presidential election campaign is provoking more concern about our country’s future than any in recent memory. But amid heated rhetoric and lofty promises, we will not be deterred from our well-reasoned, evidence-backed investment discipline.

In this exclusive report, we’ll discuss why, from an investing standpoint, you can mostly ignore all the melodrama leading up to and through 2024’s election outcome.

Topics include:

  • How markets perform in a president’s first year
  • Average four-year returns for both parties’ presidents
  • The impact of political rhetoric on market volatility

Voters will have plenty of personal reasons for choosing one party’s candidate over the other next year. However, in terms of investment performance, history clearly shows that both Democrats and Republicans could rightly argue that their candidates spur better market gains while they’re in power (or in the years that follow) as a result of policies they’ve implemented.

What we know: Our analysis suggests that markets tend to rise regardless of who resides in the White House. Either party can (and will) claim credit for producing these long-term investment gains, even if those gains do not appear to be significantly impacted by policy. Here are a few ways the data can be spun:

  • Since 1901, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) has risen at an 8.7% annual rate under Democratic presidents and has risen 6.1% on average under Republicans. It has risen an average of 13.0% the year before a Republican was
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