The main point at this stage is at least to avoid overestimating the significance for markets of which candidate the US voters choose.
That, of course, is assuming a choice actually gets made.
Because the novel aspect of the November election is that the outcome is unlikely to emerge clearly on the following day – or even in the following weeks.
The country’s institutions could indeed be temporarily deadlocked by a wide range of legal and other challenges.
The prospect of such uncertainty – suddenly heightened by the probable appointment of a new Supreme Court Justice – makes the impact of this election even dicier than usual.
But that is merely an additional reason not to lose sleep over who wins.
To do well in the stock market, it is much more important for investors to determine which sectors and companies have enough inherent strengths and cyclical or deep secular trends going for them to be able to generate rising profitability in the years to come.
Didier Saint-Georges is a member of the strategic investment committee and managing director at Carmignac
