Strange, but true: The S & P 500 has been solidly higher 12 months after the midterm elections in every cycle since 1954, according to Yardeni Research, regardless of which party won or lost. The broad market index’s average one-year gain in 17 post-elections windows has been about 15%. Those facts are on our minds this Election Day, as voters cast their ballots amid a rough year on Wall Street. Everyone is wondering when we’ll see, or whether we’ve already seen, the bottom in the current bear market. Of course, past performance is not indicative of future outcomes, and right now many strategists are worried that inflation and recession fears could continue to weigh on stocks . We recognize the uncertain macro environment may complicate the usual post-midterm rally. Nevertheless, we think the history is worth pointing out to Club members. We also wanted to zoom in on it through a Club-specific lens, analyzing how the 31 stocks in Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust have done in the 12 months following recent midterm elections. Here’s what we did, with some caveats. We looked at only the past five midterms — 2018, 2014, 2010, 2006 and 2002 — to see which current Club stocks had the biggest 12-month gains following the election. The S & P 500’s average 12-month gain following those five elections is 8.3%. One limitation of the exercise is that not every stock in our portfolio was publicly traded in all five election cycles. Salesforce (CRM) and Alphabet (GOOGL) held initial public offerings in the summer of 2004, while Facebook parent Meta Platforms (META) went public in May 2012. While we chose to highlight the best performers, there were also underperformers and stocks that were in the red in each of the past cycles we looked at. This exercise is designed to show how much stocks moved during these bullish cycles not why they performed as they did. 2018 election These are the five Club stocks with the largest gain between Nov. 6, 2018 — when the midterms were held — and Nov. 6, 2019: Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Microsoft (MSFT), Qualcomm (QCOM), Procter & Gamble (PG) and Estee Lauder (EL). The S & P 500 advanced 11.7% in that stretch. 2014 election The S & P 500 rose 4.5% between Nov. 4, 2014 and Nov. 4, 2015. These are the five best-performing Club stocks over those 12 months: Amazon (AMZN), Starbucks (SBUX), Constellation Brands (STZ), Nvidia (NVDA) and Meta Platforms. 2010 election Between Nov. 2, 2010 and Nov. 2, 2011, the S & P 500 climbed 3.7%. These are the Club’s top five performers in that span: Estee Lauder, Starbucks (SBUX), Humana (HUM), Bausch Health (BHC) and Costco Wholesale (COST). Note: This list does not include Coterra Energy (CTRA), which soared 163% in the 12 months following the 2010 midterms. The company was known as Cabot Oil & Gas back then. In 2021, it rebranded as Coterra following an all-stock merger of equals with Cimarex Energy. 2006 election The S & P 500 rose 6.7% between Nov. 7, 2006 and Nov. 7, 2007. These…
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