Proactive Investors - President Biden asked for an opportunity to “finish the job” in a campaign video Tuesday morning, announcing his intentions to run for reelection.
Thus far, Biden’s job has included the passage of a pandemic relief plan, a $1 trillion infrastructure law and the $430 billion Inflation Reduction Act.
As for how the markets feel, the S&P 500 has improved 7.4% since Biden took office in January 2021. If that held steady for the remainder of this term, it would be a comparatively modest figure.
The S&P 500 jumped 70% during Trump’s first term and nearly 85% during Obama’s.
That’s more in line with the norm. Historically, the markets tend to gradually improve regardless of who is in power — with the obvious caveats that presiding over the Great Depression and Great Recession put Hoover and George W Bush in the negative.
Then there’s the broader market. On the one hand, rising inflation has been a persistent issue, even if it has begun to ease. On the other, unemployment this year reached a nearly 54-year low.
How those two factors interact, and what the Fed decides to do, could well determine whether Biden gets another term to improve that 7.4% figure
Which brings us to his age. Biden is already the oldest person to ever be president, and he would be 82 on Inauguration Day 2025 should he win again.
That’s cause for concern even among democrats, 51% of whom would rather he not run according to an NBC News poll.
However, Biden’s most likely opponent — former President Donald Trump — is not much younger at 76.