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I'm your host, James Canole, and this is the podcast dedicated to helping you retire well.

It all starts right here on Ready for Retirement. for retirement.

Hi, everyone, welcome back to another episode of Ready for Retirement.

I'm your host, James Cannell.

And today's episode is going to address a question I'm hearing quite a bit right now, and it's a natural question.

In case you haven't heard, this is an election year.

So, of course, there are political implications for what that means. But as investors, we're also worried about

what does this mean for our portfolio, especially if we're getting ready to transition into

retirement and we just can't afford to take sustained losses. So a very common question,

a question you've probably thought about, is going into this election year,

what does this mean for my portfolio? Are there adjustments that I should make? So what we're going to do today is we're going to take a look at just historically, what do election years

look like and what does it mean for portfolios? And then also some specific feedback that's helpful

to know as you navigate this, understanding what some things you should be thinking about are.

So let's jump in. The question of do election years make a difference in terms of outcomes,

we just look at the data, look at the numbers. And statistically, believe it or not,

the election years do not differ that much from normal years when you're just looking at the

average return of the market.

So during non-election years, the S&P 500, its average return is about 12%.

So the average return, this is a little bit different than the annualized return of 10% that

matters to you as an investor in terms of what would your money have grown by.

So we'll get into that and maybe on a different episode, but just keep in mind that this 12% is a little bit different than what you can expect to grow by,

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