Comment by throw-10-13

4 months ago

Not at all, people voted for this and the outcome was expected by people paying attention.

I moved all of my money out of the US the week following the election.

25 comments

throw-10-13

Reply
footy  4 months ago

> I moved all of my money out of the US the week following the election.

I did it a little more than a week following the election, but same. I even sold any ETFs with exposure to the US market I previously owned. People thought I was overreacting selling my VGRO, but the YTD returns for my ex-US portfolio are about 150% of what I could have expected with my old holdings and the peace of mind is priceless.

  • amalcon  4 months ago

    I've kept about 1/3 of my investments in a non-US index fund for years, basically as a hedge against some unforeseen event in the US (having 100% exposure to the economy that my job is in seemed suboptimal). In 2016, all that really changed was that the event was now foreseen -- my domestic investments still outperformed that portion until this year.

    This year is the first time that fund outperformed the rest of my portfolio. Not massively, since I do have some holdings that benefited from the AI boom, but noticeably. Just adding 1 to n here. Thanks for reminding me to rebalance, and maybe find another non-AI-related hedge just in case.

    • taude  4 months ago

      Most professional financial planning would have the equity assets portion of the portfolia you at ~30% investing in foreign assets (good times and bad).

AlecSchueler  4 months ago

> I moved all of my money out of the US the week following the election.

That sounds pretty black swan to me, I'm guessing you never felt the need sheet any previous election? Being predictable and being unique are different things.

  • etiennebausson  4 months ago

    Black swan event: an event that comes as a surprise, has a major effect, and is often inappropriately rationalized after the fact with the benefit of hindsight.

    Trump is the direction taken by U.S. politics for decades now. I could see it post- 9/11, and I was not the most enlightened teenager. Others probably saw it coming years or decades earlier.

    • ben_w  4 months ago

      > Trump is the direction taken by U.S. politics for decades now. I could see it post- 9/11, and I was not the most enlightened teenager. Others probably saw it coming years or decades earlier.

      While it is kinda the same direction, it also has two Black Swan components:

      1) What he's doing actually matches the rhetoric, e.g. actually trying to kick out illegal immigrants even though they're the (underpaid) farm workers holding back food price inflation.

      2) It definitely wasn't on my metaphorical bingo card that someone with multiple felony convictions and who had been impeached twice for trying to interfere with the democratic hand over of power, went on to become the popular choice for president.

      6 replies →

    • blooalien  4 months ago

      > Others probably saw it coming years or decades earlier.

      I saw the signs of the beginnings of it decades ago (shortly following the Reagan era) but I had zero clue that it would (or even could) ever get as completely mad-house outta-control as it has. I've watched the situation devolve year after year for decades now, and all the while I kept foolishly believing "It can't keep getting worse forever. People are gonna wake up any second now." Well, here we are. Not entirely sure how we got here, or how we'll ever get back, but... This is how it is, I guess. :shrug:

      3 replies →

chaostheory  4 months ago

Speaking of impending capital controls, which countries aren’t likely to have them once the markets crash and globalism finally dies?

jvanderbot  4 months ago

Black swan is not quite right. It's move of an attempted phase change. It was possibly predictable, but definitely disruptive.