President Barack Obama stepped into office in 2009 – the year after stocks lost nearly 40% amid the financial crisis of 2007-2008.
And a few months into his presidency, he ended up making one of the most perfectly timed market calls ever.
On March 3, 2009, just three days before stocks on the S&P 500 touched an intraday low of 666, and six days before the closing low of 676.53, the president said: “What you’re now seeing is profit-and-earnings ratios are starting to get to the point where buying stocks is a potentially good deal if you’ve got a long-term perspective on it.”
Fast-forward to Thursday – Obama’s last full day in office – when the S&P 500 closed at 2,263.69, up by about 225% since he made the call.
Notably, as former Business Insider deputy editor Sam Ro previously noted, Obama also offered some long-term investing wisdom during a July 2014 interview with CNBC's Steve Liesman.
"My estimation is you've got a lot of savvy investors out there," he said. "You got people who recognize that what goes up can come down as well. I'll leave it up to them to make determinations about whether valuations and stock prices are too high. I'm more concerned about the day-to-day fundamentals. And if we get those fundamentals right, then I'm pretty confident that we can do very well in the next decade."