When it comes to investing, emotions are probably the single biggest obstacle to success for most investors. Since strong emotions often accompany politics, we feel it’s important to try and minimize politics when gathering our investment research and implementing investment strategies.
Given that there are plenty of examples of the economy and markets doing well and examples of it doing poorly with every combination of party control, we believe that the business cycle is simply much more powerful than politics. Of course in countries like Cuba and Venezuela that is not the case, since the government controls so much, but this is the United States and we are one of the most market oriented nations in the world.
As for individual investors, we have noticed that efforts of all the political actors to motivate their base around the time of elections can be a particularly dangerous time for those whose political beliefs are strong. For this group, it is probably even more beneficial that they have us, or a trusted professional third-party in place, to implement their investment strategy.
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