Presidents and Bank Stocks 1981-2016
Background
It's election season.
Should bank investors care whether Hillary Clinton and the Democrats or Donald Trump and the Republicans win?
The purpose of this analysis is to provide a fact-based examination of key bank performance data under the presidencies of Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, and Obama. It will also evaluate bank performance based on political party in office. The analysis is not intended as political commentary.
Also, to acknowledge the obvious, while the data and analysis assume each president starts their term of office with a clean slate, the truth is that bank performance during a president's first or second year in office often reflects the prior president's legacy.
Methodology
There are two sources of data for this analysis. The first is the stock price performance of 24 banks that have continuously traded since at least 1986. In addition, the analysis considers new bank…