One favorable (elec - tion) outcome that most of us will consider a triumph is that the emails and texts begging for contribu - tions will come to a halt (hopefully).
Whether the winning candidate is good, bad or otherwise, elections hap - pen every four years. In financial circles, this will inevitably include discus - sions on the potential im - pact on markets. But research shows that elections have little influence on long term investments. If you had invested $1 in the overall market in 1926, it would be worth over $10,000 now and that includes the 10+ years of losses during the great depression. The worst markets have been marked by times when the president and congress are members of the same party. The best occur when-regardless of the president's party- the congress is divided (the House is Republican and Senate Democrat or vice versa). The market went down in only a few presidents' terms: Hoover, Nixon, and George W. Bush (af - ter the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy effect). It's natural for inves - tors to look for a con - nection between who wins the White House and which way the stock market will trend. Re - gardless of who wins, nearly a century's worth of returns show that the stock market has trended upwards. Investors invest in companies, not a polit - ical party. Companies focus on serving their customers and growing their busi - ness, regardless of who is in the White House.
Many factors affect the stock market besides who the president is, such as changes in inter - est rates, technological advances, and actions of foreign leaders, just to name a few. A good way to think about it is that a president doesn't sit in the Oval Of - fice and run the economy. Each president serves for four to eight years, which is a relatively short period of time when it comes to investing. What is long-term is America's ingenuity to create prod - ucts and services that solve our problems. Over the decades, American innovation succeeds, no matter what politicians do.
