Hello Folks
As stated in my last post, I am 100% G-Fund. I prefer that “safety” of G-Fund and my ability to sleep (especially tonight) and blood pressure have a “value” to them, especially in my retired status. You can always (well, usually) make money in the markets, however it can be very hard to recover and bounce back from devastating losses, even if that shiny sales brochure from your stock broker says to ride it out. Today, I will talk about two things: 1. The markets 2. The election itself, with heaven forbid some AI-assisted forecasts. No, I will not be political either (truly honestly speaking), but whatever team you are on, you will read it the way you read it and I cannot control that. But I am truly trying to be objective.
With that said, the markets have recently been selling off. Probably the same reason I sold off, or more accurately, moved to the G-Fund. Democrats tend to love regulation (which increases the cost of doing business), a “tax the rich” approach is a common mantra, as is a socialistic world view. Hey, I get it. We all have our mental model on how things should get done. “My thing” is how does this impact the markets?
Generally speaking, financial markets do not embrace leftist politics or extreme regulation, look at what happened with Brazil’s markets when Lula got elected. With that said, a “balance of power” and “checks and balances” is indeed a good thing, and markets tend to respond positively to that. At the end of the day, the economy is what matters, and whatever party or combination of parties that can produce the best economic conditions is what we want, as earnings drive stock prices, which drive investment vehicles such as the TSP. Not pointing fingers, but any Republican losses will likely be associated to rising gas prices, affordability, housing prices, and other areas. “The economy is great!” one may say. Heck I may have even said it here. But is it? At the end of the day, this will be a factor tonight.
Memories are short: When new regulation is introduced, state income tax is instituted in some states, your car must be inspected twice a year because smog is affecting butterfly life cycles, and zillions of tax dollars are reallocated to build “learning centers” to “reskill” prisoners so they can be released early and “re-integrate with society”, things may come back around to the other side. The right to vote allows all of us to decide what is important to each of us.
Enough of that, see below charts of the S&P 500 Index, you will see it has been in a trading zone of 7600 to 7800 since August. I threw in the towel to G-Fund, during this “sideways action” and did not really lose money, or make money, due to this sideways action:
Now, lets look at some election forecasts, assisted by major brand name AI/LLM models. In sum, ALL are saying the Democrats will win the Senate, and the House. ALL (basically) say the only states to go Republican (Senate) will be Iowa, S.C., and Nebraska. Claude says:
ChatGPT says:
Grok says:
These large language models, based on prompting and a script I gave them, analyzed Polling data, social media posts, Twitter/X posts, news reports, and did magic behind the scenes and produced these results. Each LLM does things slightly different, but they all are pretty much aligned.
With that said, tonight will be an important night. The right to vote is more than a privilege of citizenship. I believe it is a profound responsibility and one of the clearest expressions of American freedom.
Thank you for reading, and if you find value in this site, please share it with others.
-Bill Pritchard
