Your Ideology Is Killing Your Portfolio

It’s going to blow up the deficit, won’t create any jobs and will cause all sorts of other problems.”

A hedge-fund manager was lecturing me about the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003, better known as the Bush tax cuts. I had been suggesting that this fund close its short positions on technology stocks, and move to a more constructive equity posture. I was getting nowhere.

The fund manager, active in New York Democratic politics, couldn’t see past the policy issues involved. As long as George W. Bush was the U.S. president, this manager’s bias was against long positions. But as an astute market observer noted at the time, “Give me a trillion dollars, and I’ll throw you one hell of a party.”

How did missing that party work out for him? From the pre-Iraq war lows, U.S. markets rallied 96 percent during the next four years. Chalk up another bad investment decision to political bias, emotional involvement and lack of objectivity.

Before Republicans chuckle too hard . . . Continues here

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