One of the top requests we’ve received the past few weeks is for more charts on the US elections. We shared some of our favorite in Election Charts You Need to See: Part 1 and Part 2, and today’s the third blog in our series on this important event.
S&P 500 Index earnings are expected to jump close to 23% in 2021 according to FactSet, as the global economy recovers. Presidential nominee Joe Biden has made it very clear he will likely hike taxes, which could potentially cut 10 percentage points off earnings growth next year if implemented. If Biden wins, we would expect Chinese tariffs to be removed as well, which would offset some of that impact and according to our friends at Strategas Research Partners would suggest earnings growth of nearly 17%.
As shown in our LPL Chart of the Day, how the US dollar does ahead of the election has been a great indicator of which party might win in November. If the dollar is weak three months before the election, this bodes well for the incumbent party, while the incumbent party tends to lose if the dollar is strong. This signal has been right 7 of the past 8 elections.
As we saw back in March, when trouble hits, the US dollar tends to do well, as investors flock to the safety of the world’s reserve currency. When things are calm, the dollar tends to weaken, which favors riskier assets. So far, the dollar is slightly lower, which would suggest a potential win for President Donald Trump.
Also, the size of the tax increase proposed by Joe Biden as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) would be one of the largest ever and rival President Lyndon B. Johnson’s (LBJ) tax increases in the late 1960s. Let’s remember though, if there’s a split Congress, the chances of the full tax plan being implemented is quite slim. Additionally, a weaker economy would also reduce the chances of a large tax hike.
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