Can We Still Talk the Dow Jones Numbers?

Back in March the big talk was the President Obama "effect" on the stock market. You can see one of the wingnuttiest(new word!) example here at rightpundit.com. Suddenly the Obama is bad just look at the market talk has silenced. Since the apparent "bottom" in March the market has gained 32% in just over 3 months. This I'm sure had nothing to do with Obama though, but lets look at his overall record.

Since the Election the market is still a net negative of 569.59 or 6.11%. Moving that date though to Inauguration day the market is a plus 5.66% or 469.02. Even assuming he is a net negative of 6.11% as of today he has quiet a way to reach the -20.5% of George W Bush in his 8 years.

Looking back at former presidents we see this Forbes article using S&P 500 data. The leader is Bill Clinton who gained 17.4% in his 8 years. Obama is currently a positive of 10.85% since Inauguration day and only a -2.72% since election day.

So the S&P 500 rate of 10.85% gained is enough to put him ahead of Nixon and Johnson so far. This is including the final decline of the recession including a low point of a 19.61% drop.

This all follows the stimulus package delivering its first payment to states and local agencies. So using the same logic that was used against Obama we can say that the stimulus was a huge success so far.

Much like the Myth of the failure of "The Real Deal" it will remain to be seen if Obama gets credit for a recovery, but we know they won't be attacking with the stock market for now.