Chart of the Day - Wednesday, October 7th, 2020

Today’s Chart of the Day was shared in a research note by Keith Lerner, Chief Market Strategist at SunTrust. As we get closer to Election Day, there has been a lot of breath wasted debating which areas of the market will benefit the most under each candidate. This table suggests that the sitting President doesn't impact sector trends as much as people would like to think. As you can see, the top two sectors and the bottom two sectors remained the same under both Obama and Trump. Also, Large-Cap outperformed Small-Cap under each President. Leading up to the 2016 election, the narrative was that a Trump victory would be bad for Tech, and good for things like Steal, Coal, Energy, and Financials. Needless to say, these predictions could not have been more wrong. In the note, Keith wrote, "This speaks to secular forces and fundamental factors influencing sector returns." The key takeaway here is that sector trends will likely continue regardless of who wins in November. In other words, the strong will likely get stronger and the weak will likely get weaker.