| |||||
Bad Credit Mortgage Refinance ® |  | ||||
| |||||
|
Mortgage News You Can Use Finance: Election Year Investing
By Linda Stern WASHINGTON (Reuters) - There's something about red, white and blue balloons that puts Wall Street in a Happy-Days-Are-Here-Again kind of a mood. Election years typically are good for the stock market, and they are even better when incumbents are running for reelection. They are better still when incumbents get reelected, reports Jeff Hirsch, a stock market historian and editor of The Stock Trader's Almanac, a calendar that charts the seasonal ebbs and flows of Wall Street dollars. All this, however, does not mean you can time your investments to the weekly Tuesday primaries. It's more likely that you can predict the November win by how the market is doing as we get closer to Election Day. "When we've had parties retain the White House, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has gained an average of 15.8 percent. When there's been a change of party, the Dow has lost 1.4 percent," Hirsch said in a recent interview. In the last 15 election years, the market has ended the year lower only four times. Most of that activity has occurred in the first half of those election years. Federal Reserve Board chairmen also are likely to sit pat while the country is choosing a President, observes Susan Fulton, a money manager and Fed watcher in Bethesda, Maryland. "Greenspan sat on his hands during the 2000 election, even though a rate decrease might have slowed the economic downturn. The Fed waited until the day after the Supreme Court ended the Florida recount, a move which effectively gave Bush the Oval Office, to lower interest rates." she said. "The Fed has given us no reason to believe they will change rates leading up to an election." What does that mean for everybody with money in stocks and bonds? Clearly, the best advice is to be diversified, stick to your long-term strategy, and do not make wild shifts in your retirement account just because of politics. But, around the edges, you can keep these observations in mind. -- The longer the Democrats mix it up, the more the market may trade sideways. Hirsch says the market was going strong when it was assumed that incumbent George W. Bush would have an easy win over Howard Dean, then the nominee apparent. Now, Democratic front-runner John Kerry is a drag on the market because he signifies a more prolonged Democratic primary season and a more hotly contested general election, he said, and that spells uncertainty to market players who would rather have a known quantity than a mystery. Back to Original Article: News You Can Use
Continue with:Finance: Election Year Investing Part Two | |||||
| Bad Credit Mortgage Refinance | |||||