Stocks Return More With Dem in White House

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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-22/stocks-return-more-with-dem-in-white-house-bgov-barometer.html

While Republicans promote themselves as the friendliest party for Wall Street, stock investors do better when Democrats occupy the White House. From a dollars- and-cents standpoint, it’s not even close.

The BGOV Barometer shows that, over the five decades since John F. Kennedy was inaugurated, $1,000 invested in a hypothetical fund that tracks the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (SPX) only when Democrats are in the White House would have been worth $10,920 at the close of trading yesterday.

That’s more than nine times the dollar return an investor would have realized from following a similar strategy during Republican administrations. A $1,000 stake invested in a fund that followed the S&P 500 under Republican presidents, starting with Richard Nixon, would have grown to $2,087 on the day George W. Bush left office.

“The market does tend to do better under Democrats than under Republicans,” Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at S&P Equity Research in New York, said in a telephone interview. “Is it because Republicans mishandled the economy, or inherited a weak economy? I’ll leave that to others.”