The Standard & Poor's 500 Index has since gained 293 per cent, while the Dow is up almost as much.
Consider another poorly timed article. This one appeared in The Washington Post on Sept. 14, 2008, with the headline, "Quit Doling Out That Bad-Economy Line."
This commentary, by Donald Luskin of an economics consulting firm, explained that the economy was great and all the worrying was like "a virus." This was, need I remind you, the very day before Lehman Brothers failed and two days before American International Group had to be bailed out by the federal government, sending the financial crisis into high gear.
Oh, and this article appeared 10 months after the recession had started, and in the midst of a 57 per cent stock-market crash.
These two epic fails are really just political screeds in the guise of economic analysis, both of which turned out to be monumental money losers for anyone foolish enough to listen to them.
They also both illustrate some of my favorite investment errors: They create a false narrative; confuse emotional, ideological belief with investing advice and mix up correlation with causation. Both were written by ministers without portfolios -- meaning those outside of finance with no skin in the game. Pundits playing politics don't have the same negative consequences for being wrong that real asset managers do.
Consider how lethal it might be to your portfolio to let your personal politics influence your expectations and outlook.
I keep repeating this, but only because it is so true: politics and investing do not mix. And this is true not just when the president is a Democrat; recall the general response to Republican President George W. Bush and his 2003 tax cuts?
Politically biased investors expected the cuts to blow up the deficit, hurt job creation and cause a host of other problems.
These folks confused what their actual jobs were: managing money, not cooking up largely ignored policy papers at some bought-and-paid-for think tank. Markets didn't care about those political assessments, and they rallied 94 percent during the four years after the tax cuts were adopted.
This is why people active in party politics -- donors, organizers, true believers and activists -- shouldn't be allowed anywhere near your investment portfolio or your psyche. And, the reverse is true: anyone running money should avoid party politics, since it leads to a lack of the objectivity and dispassion needed to do the job well. Politics is a huge distraction; it is rarely compartmentalized, and typically leads to ill-considered emotional decision-making.
These examples don't suggest that presidents are inconsequential or cannot have an impact on markets and the economy.
As we have detailed before, the holders of that office have a potentially enormous affect. Consider instead how lethal it might be to your portfolio to let your personal politics influence your expectations and outlook. This is inherently very dangerous to your objectivity because once your objectivity is compromised your investing decisions are invariably disastrous.
Yes, Trump as of today is president. Your personal view of him -- either positive or negative -- is irrelevant to how you should be managing your investments.
Ritholtz is a Bloomberg View columnist. He founded Ritholtz Wealth Management and was chief executive and director of equity research at FusionIQ, a quantitative research firm. He blogs at the Big Picture and is the author of "Bailout Nation: How Greed and Easy Money Corrupted Wall Street and Shook the World Economy."
