Stocks have had a great run in Obama's term

One can argue over how big a role the administration played in the huge market rally since March 2009. Gains for, say, Apple, Caterpillar and others are really due to management skill. But Obama did provide one crucial element to the recovery.

By Charley Blaine Nov 5, 2012 7:44PM

For all of the complaints of the business community about Barack Obama, they can't complain much about what his administration and the Federal Reserve have done for the stock market.

The Dow Jones industrials ($INDU) are up 58.3% since he took office. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index ($INX) is up 66.7%. The Nasdaq Composite Index ($COMPX) is up 96.1%. The Russell 2000 Index ($RUT) is up 75.7%.

Remember that Obama took office during the 2008-09 market crash. The market bottomed on March 9, 2009, about seven weeks after he was sworn in. Since then, the Dow is up 100.3%. The S&P 500 has jumped 109.5%, and the Nasdaq has soared 136.5%. The Russell 2000 has surged 138.5%.

If you measure the Dow's gain during a presidential term, Obama ranks seventh of the 19 presidents who took office in the 20th or 21st centuries. He would rank sixth if you measured from the March 9 low.

Republican Calvin Coolidge, who became president after Warren Harding died in 1923, had the best Dow gain during his years in office: 262.8%. The market surged as radios and automobiles became must-haves for Americans, as opposed to gadgets for the affluent.

Next was the 225.2% Dow gain during Bill Clinton's years, a rally built on the personal-computer revolution and the dot-com bubble.

The problem with the Coolidge and Clinton markets was that economic optimism morphed into pure market bubbles. Their successors had to deal with the ensuing blow-offs.

During George W. Bush's terms, stocks slumped after the dot-com bubble burst and the country was staggered by the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. The stock market rose again as the economy recovered but was taken down when the housing bubble burst.

Management execution obviously had a much larger impact on the stocks than Barack Obama. He would surely concede he has nothing to do with Apple's (AAPL) 626.3% gain since its 2009 low, which occurred ironically on inauguration day. Can you say iPod, iPhone and iPad?

Nor would he claim anything to do with Google's (GOOG) 165% gain since its 2008 low, or Amazon.com's (AMZN) 569% gain since November 2008, nor Caterpillar's (CAT) 291% gain since its March 2009 bottom.

Still, among the administration's major achievements are stabilizing the nation's banking system and providing support for the auto industry. The former was done in cooperation with the Federal Reserve. Those helped the markets and the economy.

The administration conducted stress tests on 19 financial institutions, 18 of which were publicly held. All of the 18 stocks are higher, led by Fifth Third Bancorp (FITB), up more than 1,000% from its 2009 low, Capital One Financial (COF), up 630%, and American Express (AXP), up 449%.

Presidents and the Dow since 1900
President	Years in office	Dow chg. during term
Calvin Coolidge	1923-1929	262.80%
Bill Clinton	1993-2001	225.17%
Franklin Roosevelt	1933-1945	163.74%
Ronald Reagan	1981-1989	130.60%
Dwight Eisenhower	1953-1961	120.37%
Harry Truman	1945-1953	81.56%
Barack Obama	2009-	58.57%
George H.W. Bush	1989-1993	45.41%
Gerald Ford	1974-1977	23.41%
Theodore Roosevelt	1901-1909	22.80%
Warren Harding	1921-1923	16.92%
Lyndon Johnson	1963-1969	15.94%
John Kennedy	1961-1963	15.85%
Jimmy Carter	1977-1981	0.24%
William Howard Taft	1909-1913	-1.51%
Woodrow Wilson	1913-1921	-7.50%
Richard Nixon	1969-1974	-7.60%
George W. Bush	2001-2009	-21.78%
Herbert Hoover	1929-1933	-81.22%