In the last essay Interesting Times, I suggested at the end that the Trump administration should be given a chance and judged on its results. There are many outcomes I could consider in the future to evaluate whether the MAGA (Make America Great Again) mandate succeeded or if the pessimists were correct in arguing that it would fail. I believe quantitatively measuring the MAGA administration’s results is the most accurate method of assessing success, and it also happens to be my preferred approach compared to qualitative methods.

I intend to follow the “scientific method”; however, I use quotation marks because my exercise will not meet all the conditions of the scientific method. Specifically, the data collection process won’t be replicable, as I cannot relive the next four years—it will only happen once. Despite this limitation, I still think it’s the best method to measure the MAGA administration’s performance.

I am particularly interested in how the MAGA administration performs because I own securities in American companies that I’ve mentioned before. My perception of Trump’s administration performance will be narrowed to the stock market and parameters that I believe will affect it. While I am aware that there are more important aspects to consider when judging an administration’s performance, I will focus on the stock market as an outsider. For the stock market, I plan to consider the S&P 500 Index, NVIDIA, TSMC, Broadcom, Tesla, Meta, and Alphabet. In previous essays, I provided reasons why I think these companies could perform well here and here.

In addition to the stock market, I will also examine the crypto market. The Trump administration is expected to be more crypto-friendly and provide regulatory clarity for crypto firms WSJ. Therefore, there are high expectations that crypto will thrive and innovation will resume. I plan to track the overall crypto market capitalization, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin, and Coinbase.

Why overall market cap and these specific assets? First, the overall market cap captures future value created by new products and services that I cannot predict today; it also reflects stablecoin inflows. Stablecoins have already found product-market fit, and I expect they will be widely adopted in fintech and decentralized applications if regulatory clarity happens TechBullion. Bitcoin’s inclusion is self-explanatory—it’s the largest crypto asset, and the largest asset manager, BlackRock, is investing in it. Ethereum is the leading Turing-complete public blockchain, enabling the development of applications beyond currency. Ethereum has demonstrated resilience, with a history exceeding 10 years.

I chose Coinbase because it represents a crypto business with revenue streams and is the largest crypto IPO to date, providing investors with crypto exposure in public markets. Dogecoin, on the other hand, is the leading meme coin. It has been argued that meme coins have found product-market fit Blockworks. Dogecoin stands out as one of the few older coins to reach an all-time high against Bitcoin in May 2021, and Elon likes the coin. Elon even named a commission—the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)—after it CNBC.

While the assets and parameters I’ve chosen to measure the Trump administration’s success are not exhaustive, they represent a good starting point for my interests. I’ve been debating whether to record asset prices as of the inauguration date or to start now. I’ve decided to start now because market participants are already reacting in anticipation of the new administration’s expected policies. Although I could have started earlier, I didn’t, so the second-best time to start measuring is now. As of this writing, here is the data:

  • S&P 500 Index: $5,949
  • NVIDIA: $146
  • TSMC: $188
  • Broadcom: $170
  • Tesla: $311
  • Meta: $577
  • Alphabet: $177
  • Crypto Market Cap: $3 trillion
  • Bitcoin: $88,000
  • Ethereum: $3,000
  • Coinbase: $278
  • Dogecoin: $0.37

The next question is: Does merely seeing asset prices and parameters increase from this point indicate MAGA success? In my opinion, no. For me to consider the administration successful, the S&P 500 Index must grow at a higher annualized return than the historical average of 10.26% during Trump’s four-year tenure Investopedia. Additionally, the other assets and parameters should grow at a higher rate than the S&P 500 Index.

This exercise will span the next four years until the next elections, with one review near the midterm elections. The next four years are going to be interesting.