The Noise is Exhausting
I talk all the time about tuning out the noise and focusing on the long-term signal. This week I have not eaten my own cooking. I feel exhausted from the whole thing. The election has taken up far too many waking (and sleeping) hours. I tell myself it’s noise, ignore it. Then I hit refresh.
I am not a political person. In fact, I would go so far as to say I know little about US politics (although more today than I did last week). You don’t need any political knowledge to be a good long-term investor. The opposite is almost certainly true. Mixing your politics with your investments is a dangerous game. If you don’t have much in the way of politics to begin with, you never start playing that game.
I do however like to think that I am a person of values and integrity. I also believe in the goodness of most humans.
I abhor Trump because to me, he stands for everything I am against. I am unable to see anything redeeming. He is a pathological liar, a narcissist, a racist, a misogynist. I don’t need to have an opinion on his policies to feel that way about him. My opinions don’t have anything to do with politics, they are based on basic human rights, on values.
These are my values. They don’t apply to everyone. We all have different values.
I was raised in a house full of love and compassion. I was taught to tell the truth, that honesty is always the best policy. All I ever saw from my parents was kindness and generosity. I was taught that all people are equal, and we don’t discriminate.
When I read about Biden, I read about a man that is full of compassion. A kind man. Underwhelming, weak - he may be (I am not sure). But he embodies my values. For that reason, and that reason alone, I hope, with every bone in my body, that he wins this election.
Half of America doesn’t feel that way. Maybe many of them don’t have the luxury of feeling that way. They have difference concerns. They have different time-frames. Some people are voting based on long-term issues and others are voting based on worries over where their next meal is going to come from.
Human behaviour is complex. The polls are a great reminder of that. Even if you polled every person in America you still wouldn’t have known the outcome. Some people lie outright. Some people say one thing and do another. Some people change their mind.
“When you ask someone a question about a future behavior, the answer you get is their current belief about what they expect to do at some defined point beyond today. ”
And even if you had known the outcome, you would have no idea what the stock market would do with it. In the short-term the stock market reflects the intricacies of human behaviour. We know this behaviour to be deeply flawed and irrational. Greed and fear, the most primal of our emotions drive the market in the short-term. Only that explains why we see markets moving upwards by more than 5% in three days, in reaction to one of the most contested, and as I write, still not settled, elections in history.
The good news is that it makes no difference to the stock market who wins. Businesses (remember that’s what stocks are – little pieces of businesses) will continue to do what they always do. They will continue to seek profits, they will close loss-making factories and business lines. Capital is rational in the long-run. Stock prices will mostly go up. No government can change that.
Have faith, breathe. Stay optimistic – the world will continue to get better for most people, most of the time. Your investment portfolio will, over the long-term, continue to reflect that.
Source: awealthofcommonsense.com
Georgie
georgie@libertywealth.ky