Will the US election make any difference to the stock market?

When it comes to American presidents, popular wisdom has it that markets prefer a Republican. That may or may not be true. What really matters is timing. And that's not looking good.

Will the US election make any difference at all to the stock market? Popular wisdom has that it will. As James Mackintosh notes in the FT today, "it has become accepted on Wall Street that if Republican Mitt Romney were to carry the White House on Tuesday, shareholders would be delighted. Why? Because "an instant bounce would be followed by a stronger market thanks to Mr Romney's business friendly stance".

But there is a problem with the idea that the market loves a Republican. History just doesn't back it up. On average, says Mackintosh, "the market gains far more under Democrats". That's a point also made by US market guru Jeremy Grantham in last week's Bloomberg Businessweek.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.