April 26 (UPI) — The U.S. stock market has seen better returns in President Joe Biden’s first 100 days in office than it has under any other president in 75 years, JPMorgan Chase analysts say.
JPMorgan analysts led by John Normand said in a note to clients that Biden’s market returns are the best since at least Dwight Eisenhower’s administration in the 1950s, CNBC reported Monday.
S&P 500 returns in Biden’s first 100 days are nearly 25%, besting former President Donald Trump’s nearly 15% returns as well as the previous record of 20% by President John F. Kennedy.
“Biden’s first 100 days have already delivered the strongest post-election equity returns in at least 75 years, due to record fiscal stimulus and despite heavy use of Executive Orders,” said Normand, adding the results are “not bad for someone Trump labeled as Sleepy Joe during the campaign.”
Art Hogan, chief market strategist at National Securities, told CNBC it will be “intriguing to see what the next 100 days look like,” noting Biden was bolstered by an economy recovering from the impacts COVID-19 pandemic.
“Anyone that became president this year was going to have a pretty significant tailwind,” said Hogan. “You’re coming into a point where you had to just not mess things up and hopefully improve on what it was you needed to get done.”
JPMorgan’s analysts said that while Biden’s early policies have been a boon for the market, more recent proposed policies were “no longer so unambiguously positive.”
Last week U.S. markets dipped following reports that Biden was planning to hike the capital gains rate to 39.6% for those earning $1 million or more, up from the current base rate of 20%.
The analysts noted that capital gains tax rate increases in 1986 and 2013 — when Biden served as vice president — spurred drawdowns of about 5% between months.
Ultimately, JPMorgan said it did not expect the tax increases to lead to a significant dip in earnings under Biden.
“The view since the 2020 campaign has been that a higher corporate rate would lower S&P 500 EPS by several dollars,” the analysts said. “But within a surging earnings growth environment driven by greater fiscal outlays and vaccine-driven reopening, our U.S. Equity Strategists have refreshed and expanded that original analysis this week, with no change to the year-end S&P target of 4400.”
