TY - JOUR T1 - Midterm Elections’ Stock Market Surge: <em>An Unintentional Gift from US Politicians</em> JF - The Journal of Wealth Management SP - 76 LP - 84 DO - 10.3905/jwm.2019.21.4.076 VL - 21 IS - 4 AU - Jędrzej Białkowski AU - Aynaz Nahavandi Y1 - 2019/01/31 UR - https://pm-research.com/content/21/4/76.abstract N2 - This article provides evidence for the existence of a midterm election effect. By examining the quarterly total returns on the S&amp;P 500 Index between 1954 and 2017, we show that, 9 times out of 10, the index has been positive in the fourth quarter of a midterm election year and the following two quarters. These returns compound to nearly 25% in those three quarters. Neither changes in the monetary nor the fiscal policies were able to explain the effect. We show that the known third year of a presidential term effect is weaker than the examined midterm election effect.TOPICS: Mutual funds/passive investing/indexing, financial crises and financial market history, performance measurement ER -