With the general election less than a week away, it’s hard to think of much else. And as an investor, it makes sense to care about the outcome. It’s tempting to be cynical about politicians, particularly when they’re spouting blatant new electoral bribes on a daily basis. But don’t be fooled into thinking that you don’t have a real choice here. There are very clear differences between both the policies and the overall philosophies of the main parties, and the smaller parties who are likely to be supporting them in the next parliament.
We looked at how the policies they’ve revealed so far (I imagine we’ll get more last-ditch bribes in the days to come) are likely to impact on your investments and your finances. But the short version is that, whoever gets in, it’s going to have a meaningful impact on your wealth. So ignore the likes of Russell Brand and get out there and use your vote.
That said, there’s a lot more for investors to worry about than the results of an election in one small part of the global economy. For one thing, stockmarkets around the world are getting more and more expensive by the day.
The US is in the lead on this front, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq index finally poking its head back above the record high it set back in 1999. But beyond the most reviled markets – Russia and Greece, for example – it’s hard to point to anything as being wonderfully cheap.
We still like eurozone markets like Italy, and our old favourite Japan, and even China is appealing despite the growing mania for leveraged betting among local investors. But it’s an increasingly frustrating time to be a value investor, as our regular columnist Tim Price notes in his recent interview with Merryn Somerset Webb.
Even David C Stevenson – normally MoneyWeek’s token bull – is getting a little bit worried about potential turbulence in global market. He’s gone as far as to look at various ways to short the FTSE 100.
But at least shares are trading within the bounds of normality, if somewhat nearer the upper end than we’d like. There’s a much scarier phenomenon out there in asset markets – the bond bubble. As Jeremy Warner notes in The Daily Telegraph, almost a third of all eurozone government debt now trades on negative yields. This is simply unprecedented.
We’ll have more on what it means from the MacroStrategy Partership’s James Ferguson in the next issue – don’t miss it. But in the meantime, the risk of a bursting bubble in the world’s biggest asset market means at least one thing – you should keep a bit of gold, one of the few assets not hitting record highs, in your portfolio too.
• Next week’s issue is out on election day – so Thursday 7 May, not Friday 8 May. Normal service resumes the following week.