Former Vice President Joe Biden will take office as 46th President of the United States on Wednesday, and his task lists will be extraordinarily long as he tries to pull the country out of the worst pandemic in a century and fix fractures in American politics.
But by at least one measure, Biden’s supporters can point to the new president’s bullish impact on the stock market since the Nov. 3 election as an initial achievement, even though it is difficult to attribute all the recent gains in change Donald Trump’s regime to Biden.
Read: Joe Biden will be inaugurated as the 46th president: See how to watch
Looking back, historically, the all-time champion from election day to inauguration day was Republican President Herbert Hoover, with a 13.3% rise in the S&P 500 SPX index,
between his election on November 6, 1928 and his first day in office.
In the 11 weeks between the November 3 election and Tuesday, the S&P 500 rose a whopping 12.76%, according to data from FactSet.
This return puts Biden in second place in performance, after Republican Hoover, with an external scene to eclipse Iowan’s commander-in-chief, who served from 1929 to 1933, and found his legacy linked to soup lines and the economic crisis.
Dow Jones market data
Hoover’s presidency was hampered by the stock market crash in 1929, which occurred about eight months after the start of his term and which would eventually be seen by many as the starting point of the Great Depression.
Biden, however, hopes for a more auspicious presidency, although his term begins during a terrible period of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dow Jones market data
On Tuesday, the US surpassed the mark of more than 400,000 reported deaths from COVID-19, while the deadly pathogen that took over almost a year ago sees a new resurgence.
Meanwhile, the US is recovering from the aftermath of an apparent insurrection, where thousands of protesters, especially those who claim to be Trump supporters, invaded the Capitol two weeks ago, leading to a second historic impeachment of the 45th president who was guilty of helping to incite the riots that led to the deaths of five people.
Perhaps, more than any other president, Trump has pegged his success as a leader to the performance of the economy and the stock market, which collapsed amid the consequences of the viral outbreak. Trump’s electoral defeat was largely linked to the way he handled the public health crisis.
The pandemic marked the US presidential election, forcing a historic number of remote votes to limit the spread of the virus and delaying the return in some states. The Associated Press did not declare Biden the winner in major states until November 7.
And while Biden helped with the recent market breakthrough for the S&P 500, the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA,
and the Nasdaq Composite Index COMP,
since November, the gains have also come amid the release of vaccines with reported high efficacy from Pfizer PFE,
-BioNTech BNTX,
and Modern MRNA,
helping to raise hopes for a short-term economic recovery from the epidemic.