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Obama Wins . . . ??

The popular wisdom on Wall Street is that is the stock market can usually see six months or so down-the-road.  Historically, when the market goes up, the economy usually follows.  However, is it able to predict the election outcome?

The analysts at LPL Financial just completed an interesting analysis.  They divided the sectors of the economy that do well under Democrats and those that do well under Republicans.

The sectors that do well under Democrats are:  Health care, food & staples retailing, gas utilities, health care service, life sciences tool & services, construction materials, homebuilding and construction, and farm machinery.

The sectors that do well under Republicans are:  Coal, diversified financial services, oil & gas explorations, oil & gas drilling, managed care, electric utilities, specialty retail, and telecommunications.

So, which group of sectors have been performing the best over the six months before the election?  Drumroll, please . . . the Democrats.

I’ll spare you the detailed numbers, but it also looks like the Democratic sectors are winning easily.  Investors are putting their money where they think it will do best, which means they think the Democratic administration will remain in place.

Wall Street seems remarkably sanguine about this.  Maybe, they realize that the stock market has performed better during Obama’s presidency than any other president . . . ever.  (Of course, timing is everything.  He took office in January of 2009, and the market hit bottom in March of 2009.)  Still, he does have the bragging rights, and maybe that is all that matters on Wall Street?