On the surface, Trump’s 1st 100 days (since election) ‘comp’ well with JFK, as well as Bush 1 and Clinton. Each of these presidents saw successful markets for the rest of the year. From data supplied by Bespoke (whose premium service is a good market data source) I created this table showing the S&P 500’s ‘1st 100 days since election’ percentage, the largest decline from a closing high, the next 100 days and the rest of the year (ROY).
Bullish, right? JKF, Bush 1 and to a lesser degree, Clinton would say so.
But now we layer in some other data points. I have added JFK and Bush 1 to this chart that comes by way of Steve Saville and Goldchartsrus.com, to reflect a ripple in the seamlessly happy story.
JFK, Bush 1 and Clinton each started their terms from more favorable risk setups, at least according to this chart’s premise. Trump is sticking out like a sore thumb, up there with Bush 2 and Hoover. Hoover went on to oversee the euphoria of the 1929 peak before disaster struck, so I suppose the Trump market could get an incredible upside blow off. Not currently favored, but possible. If that were to happen, expect the ensuing bear to take the form of a crash.
Taking it a step further, check out this graph (courtesy of Factset), which was originally reviewed in NFTRH 420 two days before the election. What’s this? The first elected year under a new republican taking over for a democrat has on average proven to be negative for the S&P 500. A casual review of the first graphic above shows that condition to be absolutely true. This year, Obama handed off a still bull trending market to Trump.
Keeping talk of measured targets (SPX 2410 for example) and sentiment (over bullish but perhaps not yet bull-killer extreme) out of it, just the raw expanded data (beyond the JFK and Bush 1 ‘comps’) alone continue to advise caution for the time when revelers realize the punch has gone stale (or worse, which I’ll leave to your imagination) and profit takers have long-since left the party, leaving them holding this bag… of hard data.
The above tells me to keep doing what I am doing; which is slowly and patiently taking profits, churning new opportunities as they present, gently raising cash and above all looking at that big, dumb herd from a separate vantage point. Folks, these are the ones who were bearish at the depths of Brexit and heading into the US election. This is how markets work.
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