Stock Picks For A Trump Win In November
What would a Trump win in November mean for your portfolio?
I had a lot of fun with this one.
I spoke to more than a dozen investors, all Republicans, and the responses I received were as varied as they were interesting.
Of course, the knee jerk reaction was to recommend concrete stocks, as Donald Trump has promised to build a 2,000 mile, 20 foot high wall along the Mexican border.
That won’t work because Trump is going to get the Mexicans to pay for the wall. So that means the business will go to Mexican cement companies, if there is such a thing.
How about airlines to transport 11 million deportees back to their home countries? Nope. These would all be one-way trips, and the planes would have to return empty. What kind of business model is that?
Of course, I had to start with the assumption that Donald Trump would steamroller his few remaining competitors and grab his party’s nomination in Cleveland in July.
I bet the city fathers there are certainly having second thoughts about hosting the event. They could well see their city burn down, much like Chicago did in 1968 (I missed that one, as I was in an East Berlin jail at the time).
A Trump win in November is not impossible. He could motivate tens of millions of angry, underemployed, gun toting blue-collar workers, while preventing traditional loyal moderate Republicans from staying home. Add that to a low Democratic turn out, and he just might pull it off.
This is an easy call to make. Expect a dramatic roll back of the leftward policies the country has adopted over the last seven years, and a sudden, drastic lurch to the right. The lists of winners and losers are huge.
In fact, if you look at the charts below, many of the stocks I am suggesting have already started to discount a conservative win.
It is hard to imagine big oil companies not being the biggest winners from a Trump win. American oil imports from the Middle East will accelerate, where the industry earns 80% of its profits.
You want a war to get oil prices up? No problem! Donald will give you more wars than you imagine possible.
That will take oil over $100/barrel quickly, and eventually to $150 or $200. Restrictions on both onshore and offshore drilling will get rolled back to their Bush era laissez faire levels, cutting costs and boosting profitability.
You want to own Chevron (CVX), ExxonMobil (XOM), Conoco Phillips (COP), and of course, BP (BP). The drilling and service companies, like Transocean (RIG) and Diamond Offshore (DO), should come roaring back from the graveyard.
Coal will benefit immensely from relaxed environmental regulation, paving the way for more exports to China. You want to own the few companies that have yet to go bankrupt, like Peabody Energy (BTU). The railroads will love this too, which earn 70% of their profits hauling coal, especially Union Pacific (UNP) with its East-West routes.
Nuclear Energy is a big beneficiary here, which should drive you into Shaw Group (SHAW) and top uranium producer Cameco (CCJ).
Forget about natural gas companies, like Chesapeake Energy (CHK) and Devon Energy (DVN). Relaxed environmental controls will give the green flag to the new fracking technology that is unleashing huge supplies on the market, driving prices for CH4 to the basement.
After all, it’s about free enterprise now!
The Republican portfolio should also have a heavy weighting in defense companies, as an expanded war against terrorism means we will be fighting more wars in more places for longer.
Any shopping list should include Northrop Grumman (NOC) and General Dynamics (GD). Also prospering mightily will be the makers of prosthetic limbs for the military, like Zimmer Holdings (ZMH).
Health care is easy. A Republican win in the House would wipe out Obamacare so fast it would make your head spin.
Health care companies like United Health (UNH), Humana (HUM), and Pfizer (PFE) will rocket, no longer facing the imminent prospect of price controls. The Hillary Tweet will be sent to the dustbin of history.
Major tax cuts for the top 1% of income earners costing $700 billion over ten years and more loopholes for corporations pared with increased defense spending promise to send government deficits through the roof.
Short positions? You want short positions? The Donald promises to deliver fabulous short side trading opportunities up the wazoo. Jim Chanos! Trump is your man!
The mere possibility that Trump will reverse 50 years of globalization is worth at least an immediate 20% market correction because of the enormous uncertainty it will bring. If he actually goes through with it, make that 50%.
This is why the Republican establishment is fighting Trump tooth and nail. They know the party will never survive causing two Great Recessions within a single decade.
You can start with the entire technology industry, which earns over 60% of its profits from abroad. Bring an end to international trade, which Trump is threatening to at least seriously impair, and you can kiss those earnings goodbye.
It also reduces to scrap metal value the hundreds of billions in overseas manufacturing facilities that corporate America has built in Europe and Asia over the last half century.
Apple (AAPL), the most widely owned company in America (and one of the cheapest), would be especially hard hit, which Trump has already singled out for special abuse.
You can count on subsidies for alternative energy to get axed as unaffordable luxuries, which have created 500,000 jobs in California alone in the past five years.
After all, global warming is nothing more than a leftist hoax, right?
The good news is that the higher oil prices (USO) Republican policies are guaranteed to bring means that green companies of every stripe will be forced to become profitable in their own right, making subsidies unnecessary. Many are already close to accomplishing that.
Remember, Bush policies took crude from $20/barrel to $150, topping up the Strategic Petroleum Reserve at the absolute top. What better incentive is there to go green than that?
A recession would force Federal Reserve chairman Janet Yellen to take the one 25 basis point interest rate hike off the table post haste. That is when the Fed has to start entertaining the negative interest rates already endemic in Europe and Japan.
Needless to say, banks stocks get absolutely demolished in this scenario as their interest rate margins disappear up their own exhaust pipes. Bank of America (BAC) shares, $5 here we come, which was the 2009 crash low.
As the two parties are diametrically and violently opposed to each other on virtually every issue, the impact of a regime change on the economy and the markets promises to be huge. I could write on this for days, so these are just the high points.
It is possible that Donald Trump is only playing the tough guy to seize the nomination. Once in hand, he might sprint to the middle to steal votes from Hillary, as Republicans have done for the past 40 years.
And, if elected, Trump may take his file full of draconian proposals and lose it behind a radiator somewhere in the White House. If he does that, he may find those radiators already stuffed with folders left there by previous presidents.
It wouldn’t be the first time that a president didn’t deliver what he promised on the campaign trail. When markets figure this out, they will rally hard.
You rarely get to choose between diametrically opposed worlds in an election.
This is one of those times.
Be careful what you wish for.
All Hail to the Donald!
Disclosures: The Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader, ...
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So now that Trump has been elected and we have seen the effect this had on stocks its interesting to see how stocks have responded. Perhaps contrary to what you predicted back in March, Bank of America has not been hit hard by the election results. In fact Bank stocks and BAC have been on an incredible run since the elections in November. BAC is up from around $17 on November 8th to $23.09 today which is around 30%. One thing we can expect is a lot more volatility in the markets. And of course this week's major event is the Fed meeting. We should see further dollar strengthening and swelling of banking stocks.
Now that you accurately predicted a #Trump win, how did these stock picks work out for you @[John Thomas](user:21421)? What kind of time-frame should we be looking at?
Thanks for that entertaining article. Of course in reality, the future is way more uncertain than we can possibly imagine. Would love to see a follow up article on the effect Clinton would have on the economy. I think that Obama's policy of pulling out troops from Iraq, and Afganistan happened much to the chagrin of the defense industry. It seems like there were fewer military conflicts under Obama than almost any President before him in the past fifty years, am I right? In contrast, I can imagine Trump taking America into more than one foreign conflict if he keeps up with his hate speeches and extremist attitudes, so I could see defense stocks liking that! Damned if you damned if you dont. No good choices out there...
you left out the company that has to build the wall in Mexico, Cemex, CX