The financial markets we enjoy today have the fingerprints of every modern U.S. president. Presidents of both parties have introduced innovations and reforms that make the U.S. markets the most robust and trusted in the world.
But, which presidents were the most committed to creating innovative and well-regulated markets? Wealth Management ranked the 10 presidents boldest in their recognition that markets that protect investors serve everyone’s interests.
To make it a bit easier, we considered presidents from Benjamin Harrison (earlier presidents presided over a country that didn’t have a significant national financial market) to Barack Obama. (Donald Trump’s administration is too recent to properly evaluate.)
Since Harrison was elected in 1889, 21 presidents have occupied the White House. These rankings are limited to the 10 presidents’ domestic financial policies and do not consider their responses to other challenges. To make things even more interesting, we factored into our rankings the annualized compound market performance for each president’s years in office. Before we begin, see if you can guess the president the editors ranked first in influence.
