401(k) balances in Trump’s first year: Up, up, up

Only 2 presidents have had better stock gains

“Regardless of anyone’s political opinion of Trump, you can’t argue with results.”

Tom Essaye Founder of ‘The Sevens Report’

Wall Street measures success in portfolio profits, and by that quantitative measure President Trump gets high marks from investors for his first year in office.

The numbers tell a positive story. Stocks have risen sharply since Trump took office on Jan. 20, 2017. The U.S. stock market, according to Wilshire, has posted a paper gain of $5.9 trillion. The Dow Jones industrial average has rallied 31.5%, the third-best gain in a president’s first year in office and well above the 12.5% average since 1900, Bespoke Investment Group says. And 401(k) investors have seen a $10,000 investment in the Dow grow to roughly $13,150.

“Regardless of anyone’s political opinion of Trump, you can’t argue with results,” says Tom Essaye, a trader and founder of The Sevens Report, a Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., newsletter that delivers key market intelligence at 7 a.m. before trading begins.

Trump’s style may turn off some, but his pro-business policies have boosted his following on Wall Street.

“When I look at my 401(k), how can I not give Trump an A+ grade,” says Bruce Bittles, chief investment strategist at Baird. “Forget personalities, look at the results.”

The presidents with better gains than Trump in their first year in office were Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was in charge when the Dow rallied 96.1% in the one-year period beginning on March 4, 1933, when the market was rebounding from the Great Depression; and Barack Obama, who saw the Dow rally 33.4% in the year after he took office on Jan. 20, 2009, when stocks first began to recover from the meltdown caused by the 2008 financial crisis, Bespoke data show.

Trump, of course, can’t take all the credit for the stock market’s good fortune. He entered office with equities already eight years into the secondlongest bull market in history. His move into the Oval Office also came at a time when economies in most of the world were growing at the same time for the first time in a decade, a phenomenon referred to as synchronized global growth, says Bill Hornbarger, chief investment officer at Moneta Group, a money management firm in Clayton, Mo.

Still, Hornbarger and other Wall Street pros say the president deserves recognition for unleashing so-called “animal spirits,” a term used to describe investors’ and CEOs’ willingness to take risks and make moves to grow their wealth and businesses.

Trump’s biggest market-moving move so far has been an overhaul of the nation’s tax code. “The tax cut has kicked the market into a higher gear,” says Paul Hickey, a co-founder at Bespoke Investment Group. In December he signed off on a major corporate tax cut that investors say was long needed to boost the competitiveness and profitability of U.S. companies and speed up the pace of economic growth.