Wealth Outlook 2024 - Slow then grow

32 Wealth Outlook 2024 | Our outlook Geopolitics and elections: assessing risk in 2024 FIGURE 6 Nations with key leadership and The share of global equity legislative leadership elections market capitalization with general in 2024 and early 2025 elections in 2024 is 68% Sources: Office of the Chief Investment Strategist, mapchart.net, Bloomberg as of October 4, 2023. Upcoming election in 2024 a president next year. (See Latin America: potential opportunities amidst low valuations on page 120 . ) Unlike these issues, economic growth is not easily controlled by a US president. As FIGURE 5 shows, history on average has been kinder to Democrats than Republicans in the record of economic growth and returns. In our view, this is largely because of the historical fact that Democratic presidents have been chosen in years following a business cycle downturn. Depressed economies have greater room for expansion. There are of course counterexamples to this party bias (see: Jimmy Carter versus Reagan in 1980). Even those, however, are the exceptions that prove the rule: it's business cycle recoveries that are most important for broad returns and growth measures during a presidential term – not who the president happens to be.