Stocks Hate Congress

The S&P 500 is close to 1,000 this morning. There could be more good news on the way — Congress will soon go on recess.

Believe it or not, the stock market performs much better than average when Congress is not in session.
That at least is the finding of an academic study several years ago by professors Michael Ferguson of the University of Cincinnati and Hugh Douglas Witte of the University of Missouri at Columbia. Specifically, they found that “about 90% of the capital gains over the life of the Dow Jones Industrial Average have come on days when Congress is out of session.”

Posted by on July 30th, 2009 at 11:10 am


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