The S&P 500's average annual return over each presidential term, measured the honest way: adjusted for inflation and with dividends reinvested, inauguration to inauguration. This is the return an investor actually kept in purchasing power. It is also the outcome a president shapes least: the level of the market when a term begins, set years earlier, drives the result more than anything done in office.
The full picture: nominal, real, and total return
President
S&P start → end
Nominal/yr
Real price/yr
Real total/yr
Cumulative real
Clinton
433 → 1,343
+15.2%
+12.3%
+14.5%
+195%
Bush
1,343 → 805
−6.2%
−8.4%
−6.7%
−43%
Obama
805 → 2,271
+13.8%
+11.9%
+14.2%
+190%
Trump I
2,271 → 3,852
+14.1%
+12.0%
+14.2%
+70%
Biden
3,852 → 5,997
+11.7%
+6.4%
+8.0%
+36%
Trump II*
5,997 → 7,674
+16.9%
+13.0%
+14.4%
+24%
The columns diverge for two honest reasons. Inflation: Biden's nominal +11.7% shrinks to +6.4% real because the dollar lost about a fifth of its value over the term. Dividends: reinvested payouts add between about 1.4 and 2.4 points a year to every term, so the total-return column is always higher than price alone. The nominal, price-only number that gets quoted on the news flatters low-inflation, low-dividend eras and understates the rest; the chart above uses the real total-return column, the truest measure. On it, Clinton, Obama, Trump I and (so far) Trump II all land within half a point of each other.
Presidents do not control the market, and the starting valuation dominates. The single biggest driver here is the price of stocks the day a term began, set years earlier. Bush entered with valuations near the dot-com peak (a Shiller CAPE of ~37, one of the highest ever) and left in the 2008 crash; Obama entered near the March 2009 bottom (CAPE ~15, historically cheap) and rode the recovery, the same market, opposite luck of timing. The two most recent terms also opened expensive (Biden at a CAPE of ~35, Trump II at ~37, level with Bush's starting point), and today's CAPE of ~41 is the highest in 150 years outside the 1999–2000 peak, which historically implies weaker future returns. The Federal Reserve, corporate earnings, and global events move prices; the Oval Office mostly does not.