How commodities have performed under US presidents since 1970

To wrap up our series examining commodity prices and US presidential elections, we turned to Jodie Gunzberg, head of commodities and real assets at S&P Dow Jones Indices.

Her recent analysis of commodity returns reveals that oil, gold and 17 out of 24 commodities overall perform better with a Democratic president, while the other seven, including all grains, have been best under a Republican commander-in-chief.

Of the 24 commodities, 14 have had their best performance and 18 have had their worst performance with Republican presidents. Although all sectors do better on average under Democratic presidents, all the commodities inside the S&P GSCI Grains, including corn, wheat, Kansas wheat and soybeans, do better under Republican presidencies.

Best and worst performances for top commodities under certain presidencies:

Energy sector Best: Clinton (11.1%) Worst: Reagan (-10.0%)

Precious metals sector Best: Nixon (100.8%) Worst: George H.W. Bush (-9.7%)

Brent crude oil Best: Clinton (75.7%) Worst: Obama (1.1%)

Gold Best: Carter (78.2%) Worst: George H.W. Bush (-7.7%)

Agriculture sector Best: Nixon (47.2%) Worst: Ford (-26.7%)

Commodity performance under recent US presidents (click to view full-sized image).

Find Gunzberg's analysis on the Indexology blog from S&P Dow Jones Indices.

If you missed Friday's overview of patterns that emerged looking at oil prices after a US presidential election or Monday's deeper dive into oil price movements in the 90 days after recent elections, be sure to read and leave your comments about how you think markets could react to today's news, whatever it may be.

You can also catch up on more election coverage in our US Election 2016 news and analysis feature, which includes links to blog posts, videos, special reports, news stories and more.

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