I hear so many things about how investors prefer a Republican president I often wonder if they have ever looked at the data. Of course from just looking at a chart of the S&P 500 since WWII it is hard to see how the market has performed under different presidents.
Maybe this chart that shows the percent change under each president would make it a little clearer. It shows that in the modern era the S&P 500 provided miserable returns under two presidents -- Nixon and Bush Jr.
But maybe the best way is to look at a table of this data. The table shows that since WW II the market increased 261.8 percent under Republican presidents and 449.1% under Democratic presidents. But Republicans have held office for 36 years while Democrats held the Presidency for 31.6 years -- Truman was president for 7 years and 5 months while Obama still has 3 months to go to fill his four year term. Taking the annual average to adjust for this shows that the average annual returns under Republicans was 7.3% and under Democrats it was 14.2%, or almost double the rate of return under Republicans.
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