Mr. Trump: You May Not Want To Take Credit For The Stock Market Just Yet

Stock Market Is Still Bullish

If you have followed my analysis through the years, you would know that I have correctly been steadfastly bullish the stock market for quite some time.   In fact, I was one of the very few who expected the market to rocket higher even after Donald Trump won the election last year. 

And, now, we are approaching the S&P 500 target in the 2500SPX region we expected to strike in 2017.  However, just because the market has rallied strongly after the election as we expected, it does not mean we expect it to continue into the next election season. And, let me explain why that is so important.

“It’s the economy, stupid”

James Carville, one of President Clinton’s campaign strategists, coined a term years ago which has been considered the most important factor for an incumbent President being able to win re-election: 

“It’s the economy, stupid.”

But, based upon a 2012 paper written by Prechter, Goel, Parker and Lampert, which analyzed Presidential elections from 1789-2008, they determined that factors such as GDP, unemployment, inflation, etc., are not significant predictors of the outcome of an incumbent’s re-election bid.   Rather, it is the direction of the stock market in the year to three years before the re-election bid which is the best predictor of success for the incumbent:

Generally, incumbents who preside over a net advance in the stock market tend to obtain a higher vote margin than incumbents who preside over a net decline in the stock market in the one, two, three and four years before the election. Of all the variations we test, the relationship between the three-year net percentage change in the DJIA and the incumbent’s popular vote margin is the strongest and achieves the highest level of significance. Large stock market advances during the final three years of incumbent candidates’ terms tend to be strongly associated with subsequent landslide victories, as opposed to landslide defeats, for incumbents in their re-election bids. Conversely, large stock market declines during the final three years of incumbent candidates’ terms tend to be strongly associated with subsequent landslide defeats, as opposed to landslide victories, for incumbents in their re-election bids.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Papers.cfm?abstract_id=1987160

So, rather than it being the economy, it is probably more accurate to adjust Mr. Carville’s perspective to “It’s the stock market, stupid.”

Now that history has shown us what is the best predictor for an incumbent winning re-election, let’s review our expectations for the stock market to see if we can glean something from the expected timing of the stock market’s movement relative to the next Presidential election cycle.

Looking Forward

As I noted at the end of 2015 and early 2016, I expected the market to set up a strong rally from the 1800 region in the S&P500 towards a long-term target in the 2537-2611SPX region.  And, we are now finally approaching that target region, as the market has been adhering quite well to the sentiment patterns we have been tracking for years.   However, just because we are approaching the bottom of that target region does not mean that I expect the market to top out right now for years to come.

While I am expecting the market to strike a top within the next several weeks, I believe that top will only provide us a short-term pullback, likely into the fall of 2017. I still believe we have more to see in this bull market going into 2018. 

However, once we move into 2018, this is where it is going to get quite tricky.  You see, I believe we will likely strike a significant market top in 2018, and that will likely occur no matter what is going on in the political arena.  My expectation is that such a market top will likely usher in a 15-20% correction in the stock market. 

The question will then be how long this correction will last. Within the Elliott Wave construct, we have a rule of alternation that suggests that when a 2^nd wave of a certain degree is a sharp and fast correction, you should expect the 4^th wave to be a slow grinding type of correction.  Since the 2^nd wave of our structure from the 2009 lows was only a 3-month event, it is certainly possible that the 4^th wave may morph into a triangle pattern which can take us a year or two.  And, being mired in a sideways stock market grind is not what an incumbent President is going to want to see to help his re-election bid.

However, as you can see in my attached chart, if the market is able to maintain the trend channel we have created since the 2009 bottom, it would seem we can still complete the 4^th wave correction by the end of 2019, even if it does develop as a triangle.

Now that I have likely bored you with the technical work that I do, let’s get to the meat of the issue.  It is becoming likely that the market is going to revisit the region from which we began to rally at the time of the 2016 election and it seems likely we will strike that region by 2019.  So, this “should” leave us enough time for the market to be able to rally for a year into the 2020 election.  Based upon the historical evidence, as identified by Prechter, et al, it would suggest that Mr. Trump should win his re-election bid for a 2^nd term. 

But, the question his communications team would want to consider today is whether they want to take ownership of the stock market action when it is looking likely that the market will experience a sizeable correction beginning next year (based upon the patterns the market has been following for years).   From this analysts’ perspective, it may be best to wait until 2020 before they want to ride the coat tails of the stock market.

See charts illustrating the wave counts on the S&P 500.

No holdings.

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