Barack Obama, Dow Jones Industrial Average | featured news

The Dow and S&P 500 gained to finish at five-year highs in choppy trading Tuesday, ahead of President Barack Obama's State of the Union address later this evening.

This next stat is really good news for the president. In 17 of the past 28 elections, there has been an incumbent president running for reelection, like Obama. The incumbent has won 13 of these 17 contests, and in the nine elections where there has been an incumbent and the Dow has gained at least 21% since the prior election, the incumbent has won eight times.

Parsing an economic puzzle. Recently the Dow Jones Industrial Average passed the psychologically significant 10,000 mark. This is an impressive feat for an index that was trading in the 6,000 range less than nine months ago.