Stocks Defy Midterm Pattern, With S&P 500’s Post-Election Year Averaging 14.5% Gains
Updated
Updated · Yahoo Finance · Aug 17
Stocks Defy Midterm Pattern, With S&P 500’s Post-Election Year Averaging 14.5% Gains
3 articles · Updated · Yahoo Finance · Aug 17
Summary
Midterm-election years have historically been the weakest in the presidential cycle, yet the market has still climbed sharply this year, strengthening the case for staying invested.
Since 1957, the S&P 500 has returned about 10% annually on average, but midterm years have produced only 4.9% gains, making the current resilience stand out.
QQQ is up 19.5% year to date and VOO 14.7%, a performance that argues against pulling money from stocks because of election headlines.
History turns more favorable after the vote: the third year of the presidential cycle has delivered average S&P 500 gains of 14.5%, often helped by policy efforts to support growth.
That backdrop supports broad-market ETFs such as VOO and tech-heavy QQQ, which has nearly 83% of assets in technology and consumer cyclical stocks.