One of the questions I get asked these days is whether a win by Mitt Romney or by Barack Obama would be better for the stock market. To which the only honest answer is "I have no earthly idea." Any competent and dispassionate market analyst will tell you that the financial and psychological states of the U.S. and world economies are the major factors, and that the President's influence on these matters is far less than most people think it is.

    Case in point: George W. Bush. He was a Republican, a free-market guy, right? Stocks, according to the conventional wisdom, should have boomed during his reign. After all, he dropped taxes on investment income to their lowest point in modern history in the name of helping investors and the economy. Well … oops! Rather than being a golden age for stock investors, his tenure was a disaster. The U.S. market lost 25.1% during his two terms, according to statistics assembled for me by Wilshire Associates. Had historical averages held, the market's total return -- capital gains plus reinvested dividends -- would have more than doubled investors' money during the eight years that Bush was in office.

    Instead, investors ended up with a quarter less than they started with.

    And guess what? The best first-term presidential market (at least so far) has come during the administration of … Barack Obama, who has been reviled on Wall Street for allegedly crippling corporate America with insults and regulation, and who has pushed through higher taxes on investment income of upper-echelon households. Yet stocks produced a whopping 95.9% total return from Obama's Inauguration through Fortune's mid-September presstime.

    当我请Wilshire计算每届总统任期的股市回报率时，我根本没有料到奥巴马会排在第一。我们的统计始于罗纳德•里根，是因为Wilshire是从1980年推出Wilshire 5000指数起开始跟踪每日的市场回报率。因此，1981年就职的里根是出现在我们名单中的首位总统。（全部数据见上表。）

    如果投资者预想的朋友——乔治•W.•布什是里根以来任期内股市表现最差的总统，哪位总统的任期内股市表现最好？不，不是启动减税狂欢的里根，而是在首届任期内大幅加税的比尔•克林顿。

    想想吧。股市在两届民主党总统任期中表现出色，而三位共和党总统任期内的表现则垫底。

    Finding Obama at the top isn't what I expected to see when I asked Wilshire to calculate returns by presidential administrations for me. We started with Ronald Reagan because Wilshire didn't begin tracking daily market returns with its Wilshire 5000 index until 1980. That's why Reagan, who took office in 1981, is the first President on our list. (You can find all the numbers in the table to the left.)

    If George W. Bush, the investors' supposed friend, produced the worst return of any President starting with Reagan, whose administration showed the best return? No, not Reagan, beloved in some places (and notorious in others) for kicking off our orgy of tax cuts. It was Bill Clinton, who pushed through a hefty tax increase during his first term.

    Think about it. Under two Democratic Presidents, stocks have shown the best return, while three Republicans bring up the rear.

    保守派人士肯定要反驳了，但是将克林顿和奥巴马总统任职期间的股市回报率全归功于他们的政策和任职，确实有失公允。克林顿上任时美国经济形势一片大好（哦，我没有像供应学派那样将此归功于里根的政策），离任时互联网泡沫已经破灭但还远没有触底。布什上任时股市惨淡，离任时金融市场一片恐慌。克林顿任期内的所有好都应该完全归功于他吗？同理，布什任职内的所有不好都是他的错吗？如果你是一位意识形态拥护者，答案是“是”。如果你诚实思考，答案是“否”。

    奥巴马上任时，股市处于很低的水平，这与他毫不相干。股市经历了2个月惊心动魄的大跌（这期间批评人士紧盯“奥巴马市场”）后，随着全球多国央行和政府的协调行动，市场企稳。恐慌情绪得到了缓解，“奥巴马市场”的提法也基本上不见了踪影。

    奥巴马任期内的股市涨幅近半源于上任后第一年，而里根上任后第一年股市是下跌的。可以看到，其他每年的回报率也有很大的不同。“毫无规律——完全是随机的。”Wilshire Analytics的董事总经理鲍勃•韦得说。“如果这其中有因果关系，应该会看到一定的规律。”

    总之：想给哪个候选人投票，就投吧。但别以为你认准的候选人获胜（或落选）将决定股市未来走势，世界原本就是这个样子。

    译者：早稻米

    Tempting as it is to tweak my more conservative friends with this fact, it would be wrong to attribute the Clinton and Obama returns to their policies and presidencies. Clinton inherited a great economy (and no, I don't attribute it to Reagan's policies as supply-side types do, and neither should you) and left office after the Internet stock bubble burst, but well before it bottomed. Bush inherited a tanking stock market and left amid a financial panic. Does Clinton deserve full credit for everything good during his tenure? Does Bush deserve full blame for everything bad? Yes, if you're an ideologue. No, if you're intellectually honest.

    Obama took office with stocks at really low levels, which he had nothing to do with. After a sickening two-month drop during which his critics tracked the "Obama market," things stabilized, thanks to coordinated actions by central banks and governments throughout the world. The panic was alleviated, and "Obama market" largely disappeared from public discourse.

    About half the gain during Obama's tenure came his first year. By contrast, Reagan had a loss in his first year. Other year-by-year returns have varied all over the lot, as you can see. "There's no pattern here -- it's just random," said Bob Waid, managing director of Wilshire Analytics. "If these were causal relationships, you would see a different pattern."

    The bottom line: Go ahead, vote for whichever candidate you want. But don't think that your guy's winning -- or losing -- will determine what happens to the stock market. That's just not how the world works.