It is difficult to look at the totality of what is going on in America and feel good. This post will not express true political ideology in the context of the current state of the country, but simply acknowledge there is division and disharmony and the observation that both parties blame the other.
I've been a registered Libertarian for ages but my beliefs range from Libertarian to independent. On some issues I am conservative and others I am liberal. An anecdote from the aftermath of Tuesday night's structure fire that might tell you where I am coming from.
The picture is a screen grab of two of our trucks from a drone video that a realtor came and took the next morning and posted online. The video includes shots of the front of what was the house, the rubble and the surrounding houses. This upset a lot of people, if your house burned down you might not want a detailed video of it posted online. Apparently, quite a few people called the president of the fire board to complain and we discussed it briefly and yesterday's monthly meeting. My penny and half of input was he's an adult trying to run a business here (as a realtor) and if he made a bad decision, let him own the consequences, it has nothing to do with us. There was agreement of course as it's an obvious conclusion.
More succinctly, the starting point of my beliefs is "between consenting adults."
A few times in the past I'd said that the country's economic issues related to things like debt, deficits and Social Security are bigger in terms of origins and solutions than our political cycles. The priority of getting reelected tends to make it hard to find political solutions but at the same time, I am not calling for longer political terms so I don't know what the answer is. Maybe a congressman or senator only gets eight years or ten years so you better make it count which might appeal to a sense of vanity and legacy.
I don't place complete blame on the current party in power, these issues started years ago. Did our deterioration start under the second Bush? Did Clinton leave a little more of a mess for Bush when he left? Does it all land on Obamacare? There is probably no single right answer so there can be no single wrong answer either.
The initial reaction to Biden's presidency seems very negative, maybe this is odd but his term made no impression on me at all. He sat in the chair for four years. Whether you love or hate Trump, I'm not sure how the agenda resembles anything that is conservative in a political sense, it's unrecognizable as conservative ideology. I think it is fair to say the division in the country these days is terrible for everyone and I have no idea what the path to healing that division will be.
With all of that, how the hell are stocks going to up? Is the threat now worse than the reality of The Financial Crisis? I don't know. The 2000's were not a good decade for domestic stocks but some things still went up in value, notably foreign stocks and gold.
If current threats cause another decade like the 2000's, that would be unfortunate but against a backdrop like that, there will be things that go up. If you have a diversified portfolio that goes narrower than a broad based index or a 60/40 fund then you probably already own some of what will go up whenever the next market malaise comes.
With markets currently close to all time highs, it should be easier to take a more objective look at your portfolio to assess how robust it is or isn't in case bad things happen to the broad indexes. As is my typical viewpoint, I don't want to try to predict what, more like protect against if.
My idea of portfolio robustness means having some things that very reliably go up when stocks go down, owning a couple that probably will go up if stocks go down and a couple of things that pretty much always go up a little no matter what is going on. That describes protection but it is diversification like maybe foreign equities and a theme or two in the mix is where the chance for owning the non-hedge market segments that go up. If you include individual stocks, you might have luck that way too in a lost decade.
Another aspect of robustness is having the proper asset allocation to prevent accumulators from panic selling and allows decumulators to meet their income needs without selling low.
Again, with everything going on, how the hell are stocks going to up? I don't know but stocks do tend to go up far more often than not. That's not going to change over the intermediate and longer term regardless of whether there is a period where returns run below trend.
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