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Emotional barriers in U.S. history

Posted at 3:56 PM on February 8, 2010 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Economy

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed below the 10,000 mark for the first time since November 4, 2009. The mark was a psychological barrier, as Wall Street in the last year has been one of the brighter spots in an otherwise gloomy economy.

Here's some napkin calculations comparing Wall Street performance over the first 54 weeks of a presidential term in recent history.

President
Inauguration Day
2/8 one year later
Diff.
Pct.
Barack Obama
7949.09
9908.39
1959.3
24.6%
Bill Clinton
3241.95
3906.03
664.08
20.5%
George H.W. Bush
2235.43
2644.37
408.94
18.3%
George W. Bush
10587
9744
-843
-8.0%
Ronald Reagan
950.68
833.43
-117.25
-12.3%
Jimmy Carter
959.03
782.66
-176.37
-18.4%

Comments (1)

Considering his period included 9/11, the initial performance of George W. Bush was pretty good.

I was curious about performance over an entire presidency. Using the numbers above:

Bill Clinton +227%
Ronald Reagan +135%
George HW Bush +45%
Barack Obama +27% (to date)
Jimmy Carter -1%
George W Bush -25%

Posted by kennedy | February 9, 2010 1:20 PM

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