Presidential Economic Approval Rating and the Cross-Section of Stock Returns

Abstract

We construct a monthly Presidential Economic Approval Rating (PEAR) index from 1981 to 2019, by averaging ratings on president’s handling of the economy across various national polls. In the cross-section, stocks with high betas to changes in the PEAR index significantly under-perform those with low betas by 0.9% per month in the future, on a risk adjusted basis. The low-PEAR-beta premium persists up to one year, and is present in various sub-samples (based on industries, presidential cycles, transitions, and tenures) and even in other G7 countries. It is also robust to different risk adjustment models and controls for other related return predictors. Since the PEAR index is negatively correlated with measures of aggregate risk aversion, a simple risk model would predict the low PEAR-beta stocks to earn lower (not higher) expected returns. Contrary to the sentiment-induced overpricing, the premium does not come primarily from the short leg following high sentiment periods. Instead, the premium could be driven by a novel sentiment towards presidential alignment.