People seem to be in a historical frame of market mind this weekend, so here is a chart of Dow Jones index returns by U.S. president since Herbert Hoover obtained office in 1929. Note that I have given this result in compound annual terms to compensate for the differing lengths of presidential terms over the period.

As an aside, while President Bush is currently running neck-and-neck with Jimmy Carter for the third-worst presidential market returns in history, President Bush is the leader of the pack as far as worst market returns go for two-term U.S. presidents.

It's currently better to be a toy car maker than a real car maker: Mattel's market cap just surpassed that of GM. The maker of Hot Wheels and Matchbox now has a market cap of $6.22B versus the $5.76b cap of the maker of non-toy cars GM.

[via Bloomberg]