The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

11 | O akville B eaver | T hursday,O ctober 15,2020 insidehalton.com Will the U.S. election outcome affect the value of your U.S. stocks? This is a question that investors are ask- ing these days, as the Nov. 3 election quick- ly approaches. Add in the unpredictability of President Donald Trump, and it is easy to understand those that might be ner- vous. Based on the last 90 years of data, we should predict the election outcome will not affect that country's stock values. Shareholders that invest in these com- panies made a prediction that they will be rewarded based on the success of compa- nies they invest. They bought the compa- nies, not a political party. The real question is: Will the next presi- dent potentially impact market returns? If so, then yes. But so are thousands of other variables. The theory of investing is that all avail- able market information is incorporated into the price of the stock. This was the finding of Professor Eugene Fama in his thesis during the 1960s, and helped contrib- ute to him winning a Nobel Prize for eco- nomics. If you look at a graph dating back to 1929, you see a relatively stable increase in stock values. Stable over intermediate and long-term periods with lots of short-term volatility is very normal for stock markets. This information comes from the Fama/ French Total US Market Research Index. During that long period of time, the Democrats and Republicans have traded the presidency 10 times on what visually looks like a fairly regular back-and-forth. What can we observe from this informa- tion? Political parties have not historically influenced the stock market. Peter Watson, of Watson Investments MBA, CFP®, R.F.P., CIM®, FCSI offers a weekly financial planning column, 'Dol- lars & Sense'. He can be contacted through www.watsoninvestments.com. OPINION WILL THE U.S. ELECTION AFFECT STOCK VALUES? PETER WATSON Column