By any standard this has already been a very good year for the stock market. And if we look specifically at past election years (courtesy of Stock Trader’s Almanac) we can see that stocks are well ahead of the average pace for gains, no matter who wins.
Stock market performance has been so strong as of late that many traders may have forgotten that the market can actually decline. In fact, we’ve now gone over two months without a single day that saw stocks decline at least one percent (courtesy of Bespoke).
Looking out longer-term, at current valuations stocks should provide investors with historically disappointing returns going forward (courtesy of Hulbert).
The bottom line is there is little reason to be a buyer of stocks today. Yes, this is pretty quick flip from two months ago when I thought it was time to buy but a lot has changed over that short period, namely stocks have gone straight up and become far less attractive.