Recently I had dinner with a friend who follows US politics even closer than I do. And he reckons that Trump is going to win his second election. However most polls have Senator Biden winning.

You may be aware that in the last Presidential election, Hilary Clinton was also winning in the polls – and lost. Many think though that a key poll of the ‘double haters’ makes a difference this time. By double haters I mean voters who don’t like either candidate. In the last election these double haters broke for Trump. Now they are breaking for Biden.

This prediction model by Allan J Lichtman uses 13 keys to predict the outcome of the election, and has been a pretty good predictor since 1984 – though it predicted Gore would win, and he did not win. Recently he predicted that President Trump would lose based on 7 of the keys turning negative for him.

I remember that many pundits thought that the stock market would fall when President Trump came to power. In fact, driven by tax cuts and regulatory relaxation, the opposite happened. Until COVID-19 happened. But even there the US market has recovered significantly.

The reality is that the stock market has increased under both Republican and Democrat presidents. Congress passes the laws and so there are simply too many variables to go and sell or buy the stock market based on who will be president.

If you do have investments or super that has exposure to stock markets, it is better to have a long term view, and not to worry about shorter term effects like who will be President at the next election. As an Australian you can’t even vote – so relax people :).