Don't make this investing mistake going into the Trump years, says strategist: ‘A lot of investors who think this is easy' are wrongBut if you plan on calibrating your portfolio according to your assumptions, you could be falling into a classic investor trap, says Ryan Detrick, chief market strategist at the Carson Group. The reality is, it's rarely easy to draw a straight line from an incoming government's policy proposals to certain types of companies that will benefit.
Trying to pick winners is"tricky for a lot of investors who think this is easy," Detrick says."There's never an easy answer. It's usually harder to find."If you're hoping to glean information about the market based on policymakers' plans, you're looking in the wrong section of the newspaper, says Detrick."It's not worth getting mixed up in policy," he says.
In the long run, stocks don't usually move based on what the President or Congress does. They move based on fundamentals, such as corporate earnings and debt levels, and in response to what's happening in the broader economy.