– 2015 Was First Pre-Election Year to End In the Red Since the Great Depression:
The year before elections is almost always the best year for stocks.
Investors notes:
Pre-election years takes the top spot as the best-performing year for stocks.
UBS reports:
Ahead of US Presidential Elections (Pre-Election Year or Year 3 and Election Year or Year 4) politicians often promote an accommodating and pro-business agenda so that the economy is strong, stock market is bullish, and voters are upbeat heading
to the polls.The Stock Trader’s Almanac notes (via a press release by publisher Wiley):
Pre-election years are notoriously the best year of the four-year cycle and fifth years of decades are the strongest, so 2015 has some solid history behind it,” says the Almanac’s Editor-in-chief Jeffrey A. Hirsch. “The Dow has not had a loss in a pre-election year since 1939.
But in 2015, the Dow closed down for the year … 2.2% into the red.