loss for words, said Carl Richards in The
New York Times. After Donald Trump’s
shocking victory in the presidential election,
“I have no idea what to say about
the markets, investing, or budgeting.”
It’s not clear how a Trump presidency
will affect your home price, retirement
accounts, or plans to pay for college. But
I do know a thing or two about uncertainty,
which we all inevitably confront
when making decisions about money.
The key question is this: “What can you
control right now?” Make a list. Consider
anything not on your list “something
that may cause you anxiety” if you focus on it too much.
“A time of political shock isn’t a time for investing action,” said
Jason Zweig in The Wall Street Journal. Rattled investors are
being bombarded with advice about which stocks to buy and
sell under a Trump presidency. But “little is ever clear about an
incoming president,” especially this one. When President Obama
took office vowing to impose health-care regulations, you might
have expected health-care stocks to plummet. Instead they
“ended up resoundingly outperforming the rest of the stock market.”
President George W. Bush boosted military spending—a
clear signal to invest—but defense stocks lost 19 percent in 2001
and nearly 7 percent in 2002. “The only sensible step for investors
to take at a time like this is to do nothing.”
The truth is, there’s no way to
“Trump-proof” your portfolio, said
Walter Updegrave in Money.com.
“You’re better off setting a strategy
grounded in the things over which you
have the most control—how much
you save, how broadly you diversify,
[and] how much risk you take.” The
tried-and-true investing goal is to build
a portfolio that will give you a shot at
building a reasonable nest egg under
a variety of market conditions. Of
course, any plan you make will inevitably
rest on forecasts and assumptions,
which means you’ll want to
periodically check in and adjust your plans to ensure that you’re
still on track. But don’t stress yourself out trying “to predict the
Fed’s every move or attempting to outguess the markets.”
“The morning after the election, I woke up and started reviewing
my budget to figure out how to put more money in my
savings account,” said Tiffany Johnson in TheBillfold.com. I
work in education, and Trump’s proposed policies for my industry
have been varied and contradictory, not to mention the
president-elect’s potential impact on everything from my health
care to my retirement account. But I’ve found that taking “small,
tangible actions” is helping me combat my feelings of unease
and helplessness after the election. “I haven’t started building a
bunker (yet!), but I am preparing in the best way I know how.”