How stocks did under President Trump; Dow, Nasdaq, S&P 500 notch big gains

• President Donald Trump left for Florida on Air Force One this morning ahead of Joe Biden's inauguration.
• From a Wall Street perspective, Trump leaves a stock market substantially higher than where it started when he entered the White House, even with the experience of an unprecedented pandemic.
• From his inauguration until market close yesterday, the S&P 500 (SP500, +1%) is up 68%, the Nasdaq (COMP, +1.7%) is up 138% and Dow (DJI, +0.5%), which remains the standard for presidential comparisons, is up 57%.

• Measuring from Election Day 2016 to Election Day 2020, the S&P is up 57%, the Nasdaq is up 115% and Dow is up 38%.
• “President Trump’s annualized Dow return of 11.8% was the best for any Republican president since President Calvin Coolidge in the Roaring Twenties,” LPL Financial Chief Market Strategist Ryan Detrick wrote in a note. “This was still below the annualized returns of Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.”
• Trump often used the Obama administration as a comparison.
• Obama saw the Dow rise 149.4% in his eight years of office, with an annualized return of 12.1%. In his first term, the Dow rallied 72% and the S&P gained 85%.
• The Dow rose 135.1% under President Ronald Reagan, an annualized return of 11.3%. The gains came mostly in Reagan’s second term, where the Dow rose 82% and the S&P climbed 67%.

• The Dow made 126 new all-time highs under Trump, LPL calculated, the most since 263 seen under Clinton. Six presidents never saw a new high in office, including Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.
• LPL also looked at market performance after the election through to inauguration day and the 12.8% rise this time around is a record. The S&P gained 6.2% after Trump was elected through to his inauguration in 2017.
• Yesterday, Kiplinger came out with the list of stocks it favors for a Biden presidency.