American Politics

[Tiny 12]

Because I was not interested in dividing something so obviously small by 2. 37. LOL. That was no more necessary in order to compare the past few presidents' stock market performance than your "Per Annum Growth or Decline Rate" formula.

I'm really surprised you don't fess up. Again, you're smart, but apparently so blinded by partisanship that you actually believe that. You cherry picked the period, leaving off for example the Carter and Reagan presidencies. Then when the S&P 500 annual return during one of the Democratic President's terms was a measly mid single digit number, you conveniently decided to quote the total change over 2. 37 years, instead of the annual change. That makes "0" sense. And you should realize that.

My god, Tiny, are you sure 2. 37 is the exact correct number to use for January 20,2021 to June 9 2023? I mean, precisely by the week, day and hour? What if it turns out to be closer to 2. 38!? And is that starting fairly at 12 Noon on January 20,2021? 2. 335? Or maybe you should have started counting on January 21,2021. Not to mention how far off your calculation would be if you factored in that the time for me in Thailand is 14 hours ahead of PST in USA! LOL.

Now, as long as you were so concerned about arriving at an absolute mathmatically exact Average Annual Gain for the 11.2% through as I recall Wednesday Thai time that I freely acknowledged for Biden, where is your absolutely exact Average Annual Gain calculation for the 3. 5% total gain that Trump logged in from 12 Noon on January 20,2017 to 4 pm EST in USA on December 24,2018? Too much Trump / Repub Partisanship to motivate you to do it? That is a conspicuous omission there, Tiny.

You know, the one that I also mentioned but did not feel a need to bother dividing by whatever the number would need to be in order to show Trump's Average Annual Gain by then. LOL. And that is even though I am betting that result is lower than Biden's was on either December 24,2022 or today.

My goodness Tooms, are you sure 11.2% is the exact correct number to use for January 20,2021 to June 9 2023? I mean, precisely by the week, day and hour? What if it turns out to be closer to 11.1? And is that starting fairly at 12 Noon on January 20,2021? 11.015? Or maybe you should have started counting on January 21,2021. Not to mention how far off your calculation would be if you factored in that the time for someone in Timbuktu at 7 hours before the time in God's Country aka Texas in the USA! LOL.

BTW, where is your absolutely exact Average Annual Gain calculation for the 23.4% total loss that Biden logged in from 12 Noon on January 1, 2022 to 4 pm EST in USA on June 16,2022. Too much Biden / Dem Partisanship to motivate you to do it? That is a conspicuous omission there, Tooms.

Seriously, you quoted the gain to three significant digits, I quoted the time period to three significant digits. Big deal.

[Tiny 12]

I don't see any financial analysts on any site getting fired for simply flat out dividing a total sum by a number of years, months or even weeks in order to make it easier for the casual reader to compare results from one president to another when the years, months or even weeks for each president are not the same.

No knowledgeable, honest person does that with stock indices Tooms, because it's deceitful. I have seen similar things done by promoters touting investment products. I'm not saying you're deceitful BTW, you just don't know any better. And if we got into an argument over real estate you'd undoubtedly kick my ass.

And no, you won't see any good financial analyst presenting "the average annual gain in the USA Stock Market" during presidential terms the way you did.

[EihTooms]

You picked up your mistake for Bush before I posted. I didn't know it, because your posts are moderated. So kudos for that.

Why didn't you divide the 11.2% gain, calculated using Tooms' Math, by the 2. 37 years which have elapsed since Biden became president? You're smart, you know better. The only thing I can figure is that your partisanship led you to consciously or unconsciously do that.

The combination of "Tooms' Math", the mistakes for Bush and Biden, and the fact that any correlation between the party of the President and S&P 500 returns should be spurious or close to it made it hard to take your earlier posts seriously.

Because I was not interested in dividing something so obviously small by 2. 37. LOL. That was no more necessary in order to compare the past few presidents' stock market performance than your "Per Annum Growth or Decline Rate" formula.

My god, Tiny, are you sure 2. 37 is the exact correct number to use for January 20,2021 to June 9 2023? I mean, precisely by the week, day and hour? What if it turns out to be closer to 2. 38!? And is that starting fairly at 12 Noon on January 20,2021? 2. 335? Or maybe you should have started counting on January 21,2021. Not to mention how far off your calculation would be if you factored in that the time for me in Thailand is 14 hours ahead of PST in USA! LOL.

Now, as long as you were so concerned about arriving at an absolute mathmatically exact Average Annual Gain for the 11.2% through as I recall Wednesday Thai time that I freely acknowledged for Biden, where is your absolutely exact Average Annual Gain calculation for the 3. 5% total gain that Trump logged in from 12 Noon on January 20,2017 to 4 pm EST in USA on December 24,2018? Too much Trump / Repub Partisanship to motivate you to do it? That is a conspicuous omission there, Tiny.

You know, the one that I also mentioned but did not feel a need to bother dividing by whatever the number would need to be in order to show Trump's Average Annual Gain by then. LOL. And that is even though I am betting that result is lower than Biden's was on either December 24,2022 or today.

[EihTooms]

No, of course not. If an S&P 500 Index fund or any other fund calculated per annum gains the way you do, the SEC would be on their ass in a flash. Joel Anderson, who wrote the article in Yahoo Finance, has an educational background in film. He's not necessarily better at math than you are. But he'd probably calculate annual returns the same way I do. And if he didn't, his editor would catch it and make him do it.

Here's an illustration. Say you have a closed end fund (or stock index) that had a value of 100 thirty years ago. It grows to have a value of 3100 today. What's the annual growth? The correct answer is 12.12%. That's a very respectable return. Here's what you get using your method:

(3100 - 100)/100 = 3000% gain, divided by 30 = 100% per year.

That's misleading. And in fact ridiculous. You invest $100,000 at 100% per year and you'd have 107 trillion dollars in 30 years.

I wasn't citing the Per Annum Growth or Decline Rate. In fact, not even Annual Growth.

When a Dem president's economy creates, say, 10,000,000 jobs in 2 years while a Repub's economy had produced, say, 3,000,000 jobs in four years the general way most people on the planet and even financial analysts would see and state that is we are creating an Annual Average Gain of 5,000,000 jobs per year under the Dem. But I am sure you would be rankled that everyone is making grade school math errors apparently just to favor the Dem because we ought to be calculating those job gains on a Per Annum Growth or Decline Rate basis.

I don't see any financial analysts on any site getting fired for simply flat out dividing a total sum by a number of years, months or even weeks in order to make it easier for the casual reader to compare results from one president to another when the years, months or even weeks for each president are not the same.

[Tiny 12]

GW Bush, 1342 to 805 = -40% "gain", divided by 8 = -10%...

Joe Biden, 3851 to 4284 yesterday = 11.2%.

To be clearer, you consciously or subconsciously made grade school math errors that favor Democrats.

You picked up your mistake for Bush before I posted. I didn't know it, because your posts are moderated. So kudos for that.

Why didn't you divide the 11.2% gain, calculated using Tooms' Math, by the 2. 37 years which have elapsed since Biden became president? You're smart, you know better. The only thing I can figure is that your partisanship led you to consciously or unconsciously do that.

The combination of "Tooms' Math", the mistakes for Bush and Biden, and the fact that any correlation between the party of the President and S&P 500 returns should be spurious or close to it made it hard to take your earlier posts seriously.

[Tiny 12]

They should have made it more easily accessible for the casual reader to make that comparison without dividing by a president's years in office by breaking it down to the Average Annual Gain / Loss for them already, as I did.

Wouldn't you agree?

No, of course not. If an S&P 500 Index fund or any other fund calculated per annum gains the way you do, the SEC would be on their ass in a flash. Joel Anderson, who wrote the article in Yahoo Finance, has an educational background in film. He's not necessarily better at math than you are. But he'd probably calculate annual returns the same way I do. And if he didn't, his editor would catch it and make him do it.

Here's an illustration. Say you have a closed end fund (or stock index) that had a value of 100 thirty years ago. It grows to have a value of 3100 today. What's the annual growth? The correct answer is 12.12%. That's a very respectable return. Here's what you get using your method:

(3100 - 100)/100 = 3000% gain, divided by 30 = 100% per year.

That's misleading. And in fact ridiculous. You invest $100,000 at 100% per year and you'd have 107 trillion dollars in 30 years.

[EihTooms]

To be clearer, you consciously or subconsciously made grade school math errors that favor Democrats.

You mean like being the first one here to finally point out to the desperate Repub Trumpsters that they ought to abandon their love affair with the Dow and citing Trump's "over 50% gain" in that Index when the S&P 500 Index is far more accurate and representative of the broad stock market, preferred on Wall Street and, oh look, their boy's gains by that measure is dramatically better than in the Dow to boot?

Why didn't you point that out to them after all these years?

Ok. Here is a breakdown of the stock market performance results during every presidency going back to McKinley:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/stock...220026422.html

Warning: the numbers are different from mine because they used the Dow as the measure instead of the S&P 500 Index and that is because the Dow is an Index that goes back that far. The S&P 500 Index does not.

Well, the financial folks at Yahoo! Finance must not know math any better than I do because they calculated each president's performance exactly the same way I did; by simply calculating the percent of gain or loss from the closing number on a president's first day in office until the last day in office with no regard whatsoever for how that first year "Grew exponentially" relative to the year before it, the one before that and so on. Just the raw closing numbers. I'm guessing every financial analysis site does it that way.

However, they do a disservice to the reader in that they don't provide a simple mention of what that stated gain or loss was on Average Per Year to achieve that overall gain or loss as I did. You know, to indicate at a glance how each president's performance result compared to the others on a per year basis.

Unfortunately, without that reasonable courtesy highlighted, the casual reader might be misled into concluding a president whose performance result was, say, 80% gain was a better steward of that aspect of the economy than one whose performance result was 60% even though the former was in office 8 years and the latter was in office only 2 years.

As a hypothetical example.

They should have made it more easily accessible for the casual reader to make that comparison without dividing by a president's years in office by breaking it down to the Average Annual Gain / Loss for them already, as I did.

Wouldn't you agree?

[Tiny 12]

They would…find your calculation of the per year return during the Biden and George W Bush administrations, well... I'm searching for the right word and can't think of one that's not insulting. You’re turning even math into a partisan exercise.

To be clearer, you consciously or subconsciously made grade school math errors that favor Democrats.

[EihTooms]

Dang Tooms, not only are you cherry picking time periods, you're also re-inventing mathematics and financial analysis. No financial analyst would quibble with my presentation of the numbers. Nor would anyone with a background in math sufficient to understand exponential growth and decline. They would have a problem with what you're doing, and find your calculation of the per year return during the Biden and George W Bush administrations, well... I'm searching for the right word and can't think of one that's not insulting. Youre turning even math into a partisan exercise.

Why would I be "itching to penalize the far superior gains by Obama and likely other Dems" when I believe a correlation between the party of the president and the S&P 500 is spurious?

Then you can't even agree that the gains per presidential tenure based on the January 19/20 starting and ending closes in the S&P 500 Index are as follows, right?

GHW Bush, 286 to 433 = 52% gain.

Bill Clinton, 433 to 1342 = 210% gain.

GW Bush, 1342 to 805 = -40% "gain".

Barack Obama, 805 to 2271 = 182% gain.

Donald Trump, 2271 to 3851 = 69.5% gain.

Joe Biden, 3851 to 4284 yesterday = 11.2%.

And neither would any financial analyst or anyone with a background in math sufficient to understand exponential growth and decline because, after all, none of those starting numbers were determined relative to its exponential growth or decline from the prior year.

Oh, and the prior year's result also needs to be calculated based on its growth or decline relative to the year before that, right?

And on and on.

[Tiny 12]

Dang Tooms, not only are you cherry picking time periods, you're also re-inventing mathematics and financial analysis. No financial analyst would quibble with my presentation of the numbers. Nor would anyone with a background in math sufficient to understand exponential growth and decline. They would have a problem with what you're doing, and find your calculation of the per year return during the Biden and George W Bush administrations, well... I'm searching for the right word and can't think of one that's not insulting. You’re turning even math into a partisan exercise.

Why would I be "itching to penalize the far superior gains by Obama and likely other Dems" when I believe a correlation between the party of the president and the S&P 500 is spurious?

[EihTooms]

Sorry, 14%/ year is the correct per annum growth growth rate in the S&P 500 during Trump's term. Not to say that means anything. Correlations between the party of the president and S&P 500 performance are mostly spurious.

Me:

GW Bush, 1342 to 805 = -40% "gain", divided by 8 = -10%.

I see I mistakenly divided W's total tenure "gain" of -40% by only 4 when he blessed us with 8 years of sterling classic Repub stewardship.

Therefore, his Average Annual "Gain" in the Index was -5%, not -10% as I had posted.

Still, that won't zoom him to the top of the Presidential Stock Market Gain Championships and plunge Bill Clinton or Barack Obama to the bottom unless someone comes up with a twisted pretzel formula to show how one kindly Repub investor meant and tried to buy $20 Trillion in stocks in the second week of January 2009 but fell asleep, didn't make that purchase and then forgot all about it later. So many sad and negative variables working against those poor unlucky Repub presidents.

Let's wait to see if some determined pro Repub Bothsider / Neithersider tries to pull that one off.

[EihTooms]

That's not the way you should look at it. The results of the election were known late on November 3. The change from November 3 to November 4 was 2.2%. That's a very good one day move. It wouldn't surprise me if part of that was indeed due to a seemingly clear Biden victory. (Little did we know).

As to performance between the election and the inauguration, I'd chalk it up to good economic numbers. GDP was growing at a healthy clip and inflation was subdued. That's an ideal situation as far as the market is concerned. It correlates with higher corporate earnings and low interest rates. Of course, Biden and the Democrats screwed that up, the inflation part, with the stimulus provided in the American Rescue Plan in March, 2021.

Oh really? What about investors who were busy in January 2021, forgot all about the date of the inauguration and didn't happen to make any buying or selling until the day after? Or made their move the day before so they could watch every minute of it on TV without phoning their broker?

That one day either way might screw up your entire calculation and could very well move W to the top of the Stock Market Championships and sink Bill Clinton to the bottom.

BTW, why limit your calculations to "Per Annum" Growth when you might get a whole new set of conclusions with a "Per Administration" Growth calculation?

We can see you are itching to penalize the far superior gains by Obama and likely other Dems for taking over from Repubs during typical deep Repub declines and elevating the results for Repubs since they never take over from Dems in the midst of economic disaster as though there is some non math-related Law of Anti Gravity for the stock market that it must zoom back up nicely and regularly within weeks or months after it hits an unknowable bottom no matter who is in the White House proposing and enacting their recovery plans. Nevermind the Herbert Hoover lesson on that, of course.

So why not apply your formulas to factor in Growth from full presidential administration to administration rather than merely from "Annum" to "Annum"?

[EihTooms]

Damn it Tooms, after fellow board members read this exchange, they're going to think neither one of us has a life. Or at least that's what they'll think about me. Your "real world" life is amply illustrated in the Bangkok threads.

We're actually using exactly the same numbers except for the number at the end of the Trump administration. I was using 3841.

Here's the formula for per annum growth,.

I wasn't talking about or citing "Per Annum Growth."

I was talking about and citing Average Annual Gain for their time in office since two of the Repubs in question were only in office for four years and not eight.

Your Per Annum Growth calculations might have mattered to someone who put a dollar in an S&P 500 Index Fund on January 20,1989 and neither added to it nor subtracted from it until today. If you know of such a person.

But even that would not have changed the overall gains in the Index per each presidential tenure, would it? You can play with bizarro world math and views of it all you want after that.

What about adjusting for inflation in each and every month since January 20,1989 for that originally invested dollar? That ought to keep you busy for a while. Who knows, maybe GW Bush will come out as the All Time Champion Stock Market Gainer if you did that!

[Tiny 12]

Thanks for your concern but I had zero negative reaction to any of the shots I've taken. I took the Astra-Zenicas because they were the first acceptable ones imo available here. Then I took the Modernas when they were available here because I had already pre-paid for them before I got the call from one of the best hospitals here to come on in for the free Astra-Zenica shots.

I did get the recent Moderna shot more than a year after my previous shots only because it was adapted for the lastest known variants and would not have bothered to get it otherwise.

Good deal, it sounds like you're right on schedule with what the CDC would recommend. I got the bivalent booster back in October and might be looking at getting another about now if not for what I've been reading.

[Tiny 12]

Here is another Fun Fact about the S&P 500 Index:

5. It ought to be mentioned at least in passing that the S&P 500 Index gained a whopping 14.3%, almost as much as a year of Trump's Average Annual Gain in the broad USA Stock Market just in those 2 months and 3 weeks from election day, November 3, 2020 to Biden's inauguration day on January 20,2021 in one of the greatest post-election Relief Rallies in history on the defeat of Trump and thwarting his bid for "Four More Years"!

Which makes total sense. Wall Street knew very well the hot money windfall profits for CEO and corporate stock buybacks, to skyrocket CEO pay and not do much at all to create jobs or expand the economy, as provided in Trump's one and only economic / tax policy legislation, had pretty much shot its wad by 2020 anyway.

And now it was time for a Dem to do all the right things in the right way at the right time to clean up the colossal mess of the economy produced by classic horrific economic stewardship. As usual. They were justifiably thrilled to buy buy buy as soon as it was obvious Trump's shit storm of a so-called presidency was mercifully out and a responsible adult Dem was in.

That's not the way you should look at it. The results of the election were known late on November 3. The change from November 3 to November 4 was 2.2%. That's a very good one day move. It wouldn't surprise me if part of that was indeed due to a seemingly clear Biden victory. (Little did we know).

As to performance between the election and the inauguration, I'd chalk it up to good economic numbers. GDP was growing at a healthy clip and inflation was subdued. That's an ideal situation as far as the market is concerned. It correlates with higher corporate earnings and low interest rates. Of course, Biden and the Democrats screwed that up, the inflation part, with the stimulus provided in the American Rescue Plan in March, 2021.