The spectators, myself included, are accumulating economic and political information as fast as it’s coming in and placing bets on different horses. Since Election Day, wagers on stocks have pushed the Dow Jones Industrial Average higher by more than 1,400 points (+7.8%) to almost 20,000. The current favorites have names like the banking sector, infrastructure, small caps, commodities, and other cyclical industries like the transports. The only problem…is the race has not even started.
Rather than place all your wagers before the race, when it comes to the stock market, you can still place your bets after the race begins (i.e., the presidency begins). So far, many bets have been made based on rhetoric emanating from the presidential election. Nobody has ever accused President-elect Trump of being short on words, and ever since the campaign process started a few years ago, his gift of the gab has led to many provocative claims and campaign promises. But as we have already learned, actions speak much louder than promises.
The walls of Trump’s pledges are already beginning to collapse, whether you interpret the shifts in his positions as softened stances or pure reversals. Examples of his position adjustments include recent comments regarding the maintenance of Obamacare’s preexisting conditions and universal care access components; immigration policies for illegal immigrants and his protective wall; or promises to lock up Hillary Clinton over her email scandal. The main point is that words are only words, and campaign promises often do not come to fruition.
The President-elect’s definitely has a full plate before his January 20th Inauguration Day, especially if you consider he is responsible for naming his White House and the heads of 100 federal agencies before his swearing in. But this only scratches the surface. When all is said and done, Trump will be making roughly 4,100 appointments, with 1,000 of those needing Senate confirmation.
While we sit here only one month after Trump won the presidential election, he has not sat on his hands. Trump has already made a significant number of his Cabinet announcements (click here for a current tally), with the much anticipated Secretary of State announcement expected to officially come next week.
From an investment standpoint, it makes perfect sense to make some adjustments to your portfolio based on the president-elect’s economic platform and political appointments. However, any shifts to your portfolio should be measured. For example, Hillary’s tweet heard around the world regarding skyrocketing pharmaceutical prices had a significant negative impact on the pharmaceutical/biotech sectors for many months. Expectations were for a more lenient and pharma-supportive administration to take place under Trump until excerpts from his Time magazine interview leaked out, “I’m going to bring down drug prices. I don’t like what has happened with drug prices.” Subsequent to his comments, the sector swiftly came crashing down.
As I have also pointed out previously, although Trump and the Republican Party have control of Congress (House & Senate), the make-up of the Republican majority is limited and quite diverse. I need not remind you that many of Trump’s Republican colleagues either campaigned against him or remained silent through the election process. What’s more, many fiscally conservative Tea Party members are not fully on board with a massive infrastructure bill, coupled with significant tax cuts, which could explode our already elevated deficits and debt loads.
Suffice it to say, there remains a lot of uncertainty ahead, so before you risk making wholesale changes to your portfolio, why not wait for the President-elect’s actions to take shape rather than overreact to fangless rhetoric. In other words, you can save money if you wait for the race to begin before placing all your bets.
