Finance

Joe Biden Tweets Zero Times About It As Stock Market Notches 33 Record Highs In First Half Of 2021

Joe Biden has a Twitter account. Unlike his predecessor, however, he doesn’t seem to dedicate his life to it.

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President Joe Biden (public domain).

Donald Trump tweeted more than 25,000 times during his stay in office. His one-day high seems to have been in June 2020, when he sent 200 tweets and retweets in a single day amidst nationwide protests over police brutality. During one hour of that day, between 8 and 9 a.m., Trump tweeted 74 times — about once every 48 seconds.

In addition to complaints about protesters, taking credit for the performance of the stock market was another perennial topic of Trump’s prolific tweeting. From his election until February 2018, Donald Trump tweeted at least 60 times to boast about the stock market. Of course, the stock market dropped precipitously many times during the Trump presidency (as it is wont to do during any presidency) and whenever that happened, Trump’s Twitter feed went uncharacteristically silent on the topic. But as soon as things picked up again in the markets, Trump always fell back on old habits. His final tweet of 2020 (before he was permanently booted off of Twitter a few days later for inciting a violent insurrection and trying to overthrow democracy) was a self-appreciatory boast about the stock market.

I have written many times about how stock market performance is a poor gauge of presidential perforce. The stock market does not accurately reflect the state of the broader economy, stock market gains disproportionately benefit the rich (half of Americans don’t own any stocks at all), a president has a very limited amount of control over what happens to the stock market, and the stock market tends to go up over time regardless of who is president. None of that seemed to matter to Trump.

Of course, there is a new sheriff in town now. Joe Biden does have a Twitter account. Unlike his predecessor, however, he doesn’t seem to dedicate his life to it. Glancing through the past few weeks, there are a few days with two or three Joe Biden tweets, some days with none at all. Near as I can tell from a quick scroll through the past six months, Biden hasn’t tweeted directly about the stock market and certainly not to brag about it. In fact, on April 5, the @JoeBiden Twitter account retweeted the official @POTUS account to say, “Here’s the deal: Wall Street didn’t build this country — the great American middle class did.”

Biden’s relative silence on the stock market is not for lack of accomplishments to tout in that department. The first 100 days of the Biden administration saw the best stock market returns of any presidential administration’s first 100 days in at least the past 75 years. As of the end of June, the S&P 500, considered a rough bellwether of the stock market as a whole, notched its 33rd record close of the year. Forbes (hardly an enclave of hard-left wokesters) recently ran a piece titled, “Biden’s Stock Market Is Crushing Trump’s.” Were he inclined to use it, Biden would have plenty of equities-related material to vaunt.

He’s not though. When Theodore Roosevelt borrowed what was purportedly an African proverb to “speak softly, and carry a big stick,” he was talking about foreign policy, but he could have just as easily been referring to Biden’s relationship with stock market returns. Biden does not need to crow about the stock market on his watch. Anyone who does attribute stock market performance to the president’s decision-making should be able to view a stock chart covering Biden’s term in office, and vote accordingly in the future.

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During his closing remarks in the final pre-election debate in October, Trump told Americans that if they voted for Biden, “Your 401(k)s will go to hell.” He was wrong about that. He was wrong about a lot of things. Repeating something endlessly may be a good marketing tool, but that doesn’t make it true. Trump was marketing when he continually tried to take credit for a stock market that was beyond both his control and his comprehension. Even though I never fell under Trump’s spell myself, I sure got sick of hearing this incantation. I’d take Biden’s approach any day of the week: shut up, do your job, and let the results speak for themselves.

Jonathan Wolf is a civil litigator and author of Your Debt-Free JD (affiliate link). He has taught legal writing, written for a wide variety of publications, and made it both his business and his pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any views he expresses are probably pure gold, but are nonetheless solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is affiliated. He wouldn’t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at jon_wolf@hotmail.com.

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