The Obama Market Hits its High

While President Barack Obama, like all presidents, says he doesn’t pay attention to daily gyrations on the stock market, he’ll still be glad to know this: The Dow Jones Industrial Average has just hit its high point since he took office.

The market’s close at 8,721.44 today is its highest since Jan. 8–12 days before President Obama was sworn in–and the highest it’s been since intraday trading on Jan. 9. Today’s close also eclipses the previous high close during the Obama term of 8,574 on May 8.

And for a bit more perspective: The market now is up more than 9% since its close at 7,949 on Jan. 20, the day the president was inaugurated.

What does all that mean? Probably not that much, though, as a purely political matter, President Obama clearly would prefer the market to be up during his time in office rather than down. And when it reached its nadir, closing at 6,547 on March 9, it was beginning to appear that the stock market might be, or at least be seen as, a vote of no-confidence on Obamanomics.