Topic: How To Invest

What is Pat’s commentary for the week of November 7, 2012

Article Excerpt

It appears investors weren’t especially happy with the results of Tuesday’s U.S. presidential election, judging by the 300-point drop in the Dow Industrials on Wednesday morning. However, we could have done a lot worse. The worst possible election outcome would have been a failure to produce a clear winner, leaving it up to the courts to say who won. That could have vastly heightened the level of divisiveness that occurred during the campaign, possibly even leading to civil unrest. This would have sent today’s high level of uncertainty through the roof. It might have stopped the two political parties from sidestepping the “fiscal cliff” (see below). It might have sparked a crisis to rival the 2008 failure of Lehman Brothers. Right now, the main negative we see for the North American economy and stock market is the high level of uncertainty among business people, which is leading to high uncertainty among investors. For more than a year, U.S. businesses have been reluctant to…