“The stock market loves President Barack Obama. With all its cheating heart, and all its mercenary soul,” Jon Markman reports for MarketWatch. “More than that, actually — it adores him. The love story of Wall Street and Obama is a bromance like no other, a man-crush for the ages.”
“Despite his threats to soak the wealthy for more taxes, despite Fed Chairman’s attack on savers, despite even his threat to kill special treatment for dividends, institutional investors have thrown themselves at Obama’s feet as they have not done in the first term of any president in the past century,” Markman reports. “You could look it up. The S&P 500 has gained 76% since his inauguration in January 2009, while the Nasdaq 100 is up 128%.”
“The staggering advance of the market is probably one of Obama’s greatest accomplishments, and yet, in a rich irony, political sensitivities prevent him from bragging about it,” Markman reports. “The beauty part is that this was not a coincidence, beginner’s luck or a historical fluke. The administration and the Federal Reserve run by his appointed chairman, Ben Bernanke, have systematically stuffed big banks’ pockets with cash in an unending rescue effort, slashed interest rates to the lowest levels of the past 300 years, diverted senior citizens’ savings to revive the moribund residential construction industry and showered drug makers and insurers with fresh sources of revenue from his health care overhaul.”
Markman reports, “Little wonder then that Wall Street cannot bear the idea of parting ways with the Obama administration, and thus in the past two months has thrown a tantrum to protest the surprising advancement of challenger Mitt Romney in the polls. Now that the president has won a second term, you can expect most of the sectors that have benefited from the present administration to keep on rolling. Here are some top prospects.”
“The Obama Administration has not promoted a coherent technology policy. But outside of a couple of attempts to rein in Google, it has not willfully attacked the tech industry either,” Markman reports. “The group has risen 114% during the four years, led by the 675% blitzkrieg of Apple and 390% advance of Amazon.com… Expect the market to continue its bromance with Obama in a second term, but buy into it opportunistically when panic is in the air.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews readers too numerous to mention individually for the heads up.]