@Deathmerchant: they were going up under Obama to, you thank him?
Obama took office during the worst of the US Recession. The stock market had nowhere to go but up.
While I am grateful for the stock market increase under Obama's Presidency, those 8 years were a bit of a financial roller coaster. I recall many people were terrified of large scale investing because they were concerned about where the economy was going, the Affordable Care Act, the inconsistent US foreign policy. Very few individuals could say with a straight face that your investments will be worth more in 3-5 years, let alone worth the same exact value you put in. Conservative investing was the safe choice under Obama's 2 terms, I would have felt quite nervous had I been engaged in more aggressive investing. Of course, loses can be managed properly by not sticking all your eggs in 1 or 2 baskets, but nevertheless I still had a great degree of hesitancy.
Now that Trump is President, I do feel more confident in our country's economy and our stock market. I actively pursue more aggressive investing while still maintaining a diversified portfolio. The results have been quite lucrative for me so far. I won't get into the raw numbers, but figuratively speaking, some of these stock prices went through the roof.
So would you agree that Obama did a fine job in getting the US out of that recession?
What US foreign policy inconsistancies? Was it Obama warming up to Russia (until Crimea) and Iran (with a treaty, which you may dislike but atleast there was talking). Heck he even smacktalked China, something you would approve of yes?
Not in the slightest do I agree Obama did a decent job on fixing our country's economy. Based on my own experiences from 2010-2014, the US economy was gradual pulling out of the recession on its own. Don't get me wrong, some of Obama's policies did a little to assist the recession, but half of them at the time seemed to be kicking the hurting economy back down. I spoke earlier in regards to Obamacare and that really hurt market stability. I cannot stress enough that every single NY resident I spoke to during those years about investing, said the economy and market was way too unstable to trust long term. In 2011, there was speculative talk a double dip recession might happen. The last one happened in the late 30s, while we can argue about speculative theories, some evidence was occurring in 2011 that it could have become a possibility.
I'm surprised you asked about Obama's Foreign Policy Failures, its kind of a semi well known joke. He escalated the war in Afghanistan during 2009 with the failed 'Surge', did the Russian 'Reset' which did absolutely nothing as no follow up was every done to improve relations or attempt some major concrete changes, increased CIA Drone Strikes throughout the Middle East by expanding the War On Terror, Air Operation of Libya (which morphed from a relatively straightforward No Fly Zone into an operation seeking regime change, Mission Creep was a huge factor in the Libyan intervention), drew the Red Line in Syria and backpedaled constantly on whether to launch attacks, backed down over the Russian invasion of Crimea, gave us the one sided Iran deal, allowed ISIS to pour over from Syria into Iraq (even with a routing Iraqi Army, US air power and Special Forces could easily have halted an advancing ISIS attack, but instead allowed them to control and manifest their gained territory into hardened positions before finally caving to pressure and launching air attacks). I'm sure I'm missing other failures as well. His Foreign Policy was rife with inconsistency and incompetence.