Policy Narrative Investing

Political news is the noisiest kind of information in the market. But beneath the noise are things that really change where money flows: budgets, laws, tariffs, export restrictions, subsidies and procurement contracts. This handbook cares only about the latter.

The difference between a slogan and a policy

A politician says, “We're going to bring the factories back.” That's a slogan. Congress passes a law that subsidizes companies building plants at home, the Treasury issues the detailed rules, companies announce investment plans and engineering firms win contracts. That's policy, and the capital flows it creates. The first may be forgotten the next day; the second shows up in earnings reports for years.

Why set your political views aside

Everyone has political views, and that's normal. The problem is that political views quietly creep into your positions. When the side you support takes office, you tend to believe its policies will all succeed; when the side you oppose takes office, you tend to think the economy is headed for trouble. Both tendencies lead you astray.

The market doesn't care whom you support. It cares only which companies' revenue a policy will raise and which companies' costs it will push up. A useful test: if the side you support loses power, would your positions keep you up at night? If so, you're betting on a belief, not on logic you can test.

Where this handbook's themes come from

In recent years, US policy has settled into several fairly durable themes, and many of them have drawn some degree of support from both parties:

Chapters 1 and 2 cover method: how to score a narrative, and deciding first what to avoid. Chapter 9 covers elections and policy cycles, Chapter 10 covers execution in practice, and Chapter 11 is the toolkit.

The narrative decides what you research; valuation decides when you buy. Scoring these two separately is the first step to avoiding “right story, lost money.”

Four steps: from change to price

How long a policy lasts matters more than how strong it is

How much revenue a policy brings an industry depends on how long it lasts. Compare two laws passed in 2022:

This isn't a judgment on which law is better. It illustrates a pattern: a policy backed by only one party is much more likely to be rewritten after a change of government. The stocks of companies that bet on it will swing hard with election results. Directions both parties support, such as defense, supply-chain security and export controls on key technologies, usually last longer.

Six scoring dimensions

The first four measure how reliable the narrative is; the last two measure how attractive the price is. Keeping them separate is the only way to answer two different questions: is it worth researching, and is it worth buying now?

The narrative can be right and the instrument wrong

Within a real trend, plenty of companies fail through poor execution, competition, debt or dilution. A correct narrative only tells you money will flow in that direction, not that it will flow into the company you bought. A few common mismatches:

• You bought the purest story, not the most profitable link. The profits from a new technology often land first with suppliers of equipment, materials and infrastructure, not with the best-known end-product companies.
• You bought the concept, not the revenue. A company with a hot word in its name but little related revenue will trade with the theme, but its long-term performance depends on its core business.
• You bought a single company and took on single-company risk. One company's accident, lawsuit or management change can wipe out everything the theme earned you. A thematic ETF spreads out this layer of risk.

Write down invalidation conditions

Before you buy into a theme, write down which facts would make you admit the call was wrong. Note that these are facts, not prices:

A narrative is a tool, not a creed.

The first step in thematic investing is often subtraction. Rule out the markets that are structurally disadvantaged or whose risks can't be clearly stated, and the remaining choices get much clearer.

Cheap is not the same as undervalued

Many countries' stock markets trade at low price-to-earnings ratios (P/E) for years and look cheap. But low valuations usually have reasons: slow growth, an old-fashioned industry mix, low returns on capital, unstable policy, a currency that keeps losing value. If those reasons don't change, cheap things can stay cheap, or get cheaper. That's a value trap.

To judge whether a market is really undervalued, ask: are there signs that the reasons it's cheap are changing? For example, corporate governance reform, a shift in the rate environment, or a cyclical turn in its main industries. Without a catalyst like that, a low valuation by itself is not a reason to buy.

Buying a country's index means buying its industry mix

Country indexes are usually market-cap weighted, so a country's stock market performance is largely decided by its few biggest industries:

This table shows that “I'm bullish on country X” is too coarse. Which of its industries are you actually bullish on? If it's that industry, buying a global sector ETF or the industry leaders directly may be cleaner than buying the whole country.

Capital has no nationality

Capital flows to wherever returns are highest and risk is most manageable, whatever the country. So judge a market the way capital does, comparing coolly:

• Growth and returns on capital: can companies keep earning returns above their cost of capital?
• Currency: for a dollar-based investor, a falling local currency eats directly into stock returns.
• Governance and shareholder returns: do companies care about minority shareholders, and do they pay steady dividends and buy back shares?
• Policy predictability: could the rules change suddenly, and could foreign investors be treated differently?
• Geopolitical and sanctions risk: this used to be widely overlooked. After the Russia–Ukraine war broke out in 2022, Russian stocks held by foreign investors became untradable almost overnight, and the major index providers then removed Russia from their indexes. The holdings were still there, but they could no longer be sold.

Markets that call for extra caution

The benefit of subtraction

Writing a “do-not-touch list” first protects you when the market gets excited. When some market suddenly surges and everyone on social media is talking about it, just glance at the list: why is it on there? Has that reason changed? If not, let this opportunity pass. Missing an opportunity costs far less than getting trapped in a market whose rules no one can pin down.

For the past thirty years, globalization ran on one principle: “make it wherever it's cheapest.” Now more and more policy asks a different question: where is it safe? The answer is often at home, or in a nearby neighbor with stable relations.

From efficiency first to security first

Supply disruptions during the pandemic, regional conflicts hitting shipping, and export controls on key technologies have made governments reassess supply-chain risk. The new thinking goes by several names:

• Reshoring: moving production back home.
• Nearshoring: moving to a neighboring country, such as from Asia to Mexico.
• Friend-shoring: moving to allies with stable political relations.

The shift already shows up in the data: in 2023, Mexico overtook China as the largest source of US imports. For investors, the key question is: as supply chains reorganize, which pieces must be newly built, and which services must be bought?

The Western Hemisphere gets new attention

US policy debate increasingly treats the Western Hemisphere (North, Central and South America) as America's strategic backyard: both a destination for relocated supply chains and a source of resources and security. This brings a risk that used to get little attention: commercial assets can be redefined as national security assets.

In 2025, the sale of port operating rights at both ends of the Panama Canal was debated in terms of national security and great-power competition. What had been an ordinary commercial asset sale became a diplomatic issue. This means the ownership of strategically located ports, mines, power grids and communications facilities can change suddenly with policy, and the companies holding them may benefit or may be forced to sell.

Three phases: security first, then resources, then manufacturing

The logic of this order is simple: capital won't go where it isn't safe. So when a region becomes a policy priority, the first orders usually go to companies in security, law enforcement and surveillance. Once security improves, investment in resource development follows. Only when both infrastructure and politics have stabilized does long-term investment in manufacturing and logistics arrive at scale.

Types of companies often placed in this chain include drone and maritime equipment makers and government data-analytics software companies (phase one); copper miners and oil services companies (phase two); and industrial real estate, cross-border rail, and engineering and construction (E&C) companies (phase three). The lazy way to invest in Latin America as a whole is a regional ETF, such as a Latin America 40 index fund or a Mexico country ETF.

Mexico: two sides of a coin

With a “two-sided narrative” like this, the best approach is to watch the evidence on both sides at once: foreign direct investment (FDI) and vacancy rates in industrial real estate (the case for), and trade agreement reviews, tariff announcements and security incidents (the case against). Shift your position toward whichever side the evidence is piling up on.

Regional politics is changing too

In recent years, some Latin American countries have elected governments that put more weight on markets and attracting foreign investment, while others have stepped up resource nationalism. For investors, a government's place on the political spectrum isn't the point. What matters are a few concrete things: can foreign capital move in and out freely, are contracts and property rights respected, and could resource taxes and royalties be raised suddenly? These decide the value of a mine or a railroad more than election slogans do.

A conflict ends, but its lessons reshape countries' budgets for the next decade. To invest in the defense theme, separate two kinds of money: emergency spending during a conflict, and military-preparedness spending that continues after the conflict is over.

Why defense spending runs on a long cycle

• Europe is catching up: at the 2025 NATO summit, members agreed to raise defense and related spending to 5% of GDP by 2035, including 3.5% for core defense spending. That's far above the under-2% level that used to be common.
• Stockpiles need rebuilding: recent conflicts have used up large amounts of munitions and air-defense missiles, and many countries will need years to replenish their stocks.
• Bipartisan support: in the US, the defense budget is one of the few spending items both parties are willing to back, so it is durable.
• Long procurement cycles: contracts for a warship or a fighter jet often run more than ten years, which gives contractors high revenue visibility.

Modern war needs “cheap, good enough and mass-producible”

Recent conflicts have shown that large numbers of cheap drones and munitions are often more effective than a few expensive platforms. Using a missile that costs millions of dollars to shoot down a drone that costs tens of thousands is economically unsustainable. This has shifted procurement priorities:

The lazy expression is a US aerospace and defense ETF (for example, ITA or PPA). Be aware that commercial aerospace has a sizable weight in these ETFs, so they are also exposed to the air travel cycle.

The post-war trade: which costs will disappear

During a conflict, the market pays many extra costs for risk: the risk premium in crude, marine insurance premiums, freight costs from rerouting, airlines' fuel costs. When a conflict eases, the most useful questions to ask are: Which costs created by the war will disappear? Who benefits most when they do?

One more point is easy to miss: defense stocks don't necessarily fall after a war. If the conflict's lessons drive long-term preparedness spending, defense contractors' orders keep growing; the ones that fall are usually companies that live on emergency spending and short-term orders. So chasing defense stocks at the height of a conflict and panic-selling them when it eases are both common mistakes.

Don't make a conflict your only reason to trade

The timing and outcome of geopolitical events are extremely hard to predict, and the market's reaction to them is often more short-lived than you'd expect. A sounder approach:

• Use long-term positions to bet on the structural growth of preparedness spending, not on any one conflict.
• Trade a conflict short term with small size and defined-risk instruments (such as spreads), and write your exit conditions in advance.
• Hedge within the portfolio: when you hold assets that benefit from escalation, put a small slice of money into assets that benefit from de-escalation, such as airline stocks or call options on them.

Real industrial independence starts with resource independence. Without copper there's no power grid; without rare earth magnets there are no motors or missiles; without fuel, no amount of crude oil will move a truck.

Critical minerals: the bottleneck is processing, not mining

Many critical minerals aren't scarce on Earth. What's scarce is the capacity to separate, refine and process them after mining. Take rare earths: about 90% of the world's rare earth processing capacity is in China. That makes it a geopolitical tool:

• Starting in 2023, materials such as gallium, germanium and graphite were brought under export controls one after another.
• In 2025, the controls expanded to several rare earth elements and related technologies, and some overseas automakers and electronics makers faced parts shortages for a time.

Countries have responded by trying to build complete domestic “mine-to-magnet” chains. That takes many years and huge investment, and in the early years it often makes no economic sense, because the competitor's processing costs are lower and it can push prices down. So governments have started stepping in with more direct tools.

Government stakes and price floors

In 2025, the US government did things rarely seen before: the Department of Defense took a stake in a domestic rare earth company and committed to a long-term price floor and purchases; the government also took a stake in a large chipmaker. However you judge this, the investment implication is clear: the government has stepped in behind certain companies and taken on part of their price risk.

A price floor works like a put option the government hands the company for free. Here is a hypothetical example:

Look at the risks on the other side too: government support can weaken when policy changes; a company with a government equity stake may make business decisions shaped by non-commercial factors; and once everyone recognizes the floor, the stock price will quickly price it in.

Energy: having oil doesn't mean having fuel

Energy independence isn't only about how much crude you can pump; it's also about how much gasoline, diesel and jet fuel you can refine. The US is a major crude producer, but its refining capacity has grown little for decades, and some refineries are closing. When refined products (especially diesel) are tight, refiners' margins (the crack spread) widen sharply, while crude producers don't necessarily benefit.

The links in the energy theme have different drivers:

Gold: a hedge against a splintering monetary order

Traditionally, gold moves opposite to real yields. But since 2022, central banks have bought more than 1,000 tonnes of gold a year, and that buying has clearly weakened the link between gold and real yields. Central banks buy gold largely to reduce their dependence on a single currency and a single financial system: the freezing of Russia's foreign exchange reserves in 2022 made many countries realize that assets held in another country's currency can be frozen in a conflict.

So in today's narrative, gold looks more like a hedge against “a splintering monetary order” and “internal risks in major economies.” Households in some large economies are also adding gold as their real estate and local financial assets come under pressure, which gives gold demand support beyond the macro picture.

Remember the counterargument too: gold produces no cash flow, and the return from holding it comes entirely from someone else being willing to pay a higher price. If central bank buying slows, or real yields rise sharply, gold could go through a long stretch of sideways trading or even decline.

Don't ask who will bring the factories back; ask who will make money because everyone needs them. Where factories get built and who builds them is full of uncertainty, but whoever builds them has to buy equipment, use power, hire engineering firms and rent warehouses.

The “shovels” reshoring needs

The lazy expressions are US infrastructure ETFs (for example, PAVE) and grid equipment ETFs. The theme's biggest risk is the cycle: industrial capital expenditure (capex) is very sensitive to interest rates, and when rates rise and subsidies wind down, projects get delayed or even canceled.

Who actually pays the tariff

Legally, the importer pays the tariff, but the economic burden is split three ways: foreign exporters (cutting prices to keep orders), importers (squeezing their own margins) and consumers (paying more). How much each one bears depends on who has more bargaining power.

For stock investors, what matters most is how much of the cost a company can pass through to customers, and whether customers buy less once it does. Here is a hypothetical company: revenue of 100, cost of goods of 60 (a 40% gross margin), with half of that cost coming from imports.

Second-order effects of tariffs

• Domestic competitors benefit: once imports get more expensive, companies making similar products at home can raise prices or take market share. Steel, some chemicals and manufacturing are typical examples.
• Downstream users lose: manufacturers that use steel and aluminum as inputs see their costs rise.
• Trade reroutes: some goods are re-exported through third countries, whose logistics and assembly businesses grow until the rules close the loophole.
• Retaliation and negotiation: the other side's counter-tariffs hit export industries such as farm products and aircraft. Many tariffs end up as bargaining chips, announced, paused and adjusted again and again.

The last point is especially important. Tariff policy often follows a rhythm of “announce hard, then partly back down.” In April 2025, after sweeping tariffs were announced, stocks and Treasuries both fell sharply, and within a week most of the tariffs were paused for 90 days. When you trade tariff news, treat “a pause or an exemption” as a scenario that can appear at any moment: don't slash your positions in the first day's panic, and don't chase in the first day's cheering.

In the policy narrative, AI isn't just a technology; it's a tool for lowering unit labor costs and keeping the nation competitive. Whichever company wins the model race, it has to buy power, buy hardware and connect to networks.

From apps to power plants: money flows downstream

This chart explains why the “picks and shovels” logic is so popular in the AI theme: it's hard to tell which model company will win, but their combined capital expenditure (capex) eventually turns into orders for chips, networking equipment, data center construction and power.

Power: the hardest constraint

Growth in data center power use has turned electricity from a slow-growing utility business into part of the tech theme. A few links worth watching:

• Generation: sources that can supply steady power for the long term are most in demand, and big tech companies are snapping up long-term power purchase agreements (PPAs) for nuclear and natural gas power.
• Grid equipment: transformers, switchgear and transmission lines have long lead times, and capacity expands slowly.
• Gas turbines and cooling equipment: demand from data centers building their own power supply and cooling.
• Networking and connectivity: high-speed networks within and between data centers; companies holding related patents and equipment also benefit.

The counterargument: power demand forecasts have been too optimistic many times in the past; gains in chip energy efficiency could cut the power used per unit of compute; and residents and governments in some places have started opposing new data centers over electricity prices, water and land. All of this could limit the pace of growth.

Robotics: AI in physical form

If AI lowers the cost of mental work, robots lower the cost of physical work. Their first stop is most likely factories and logistics warehouses: controlled environments, repetitive tasks, high labor costs and jobs that are hard to fill. This ties in directly with the reshoring theme: for reshored factories to make money where labor is expensive, they have to automate heavily.

Risk levels within the robotics theme vary widely. Established industrial automation companies have steady revenue and customers; humanoid robot makers and early-stage startups mostly don't have revenue at scale yet, and some have gone public through special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs), with high risks of dilution and failure. Putting them in the same basket mixes two completely different kinds of risk.

Four risks in the AI theme

Advice for learners: start with a broad semiconductor or tech ETF to get to know the theme, then study individual stocks. If you must pick stocks, favor the “lower layers”: links with good order visibility whose valuations haven't been bid up to the sky.

People have to eat and they have to see a doctor. When money is short they count every penny; when they have more, they buy experiences. These needs don't change with the political cycle, but inflation changes what they look like for different groups of people.

How inflation splits consumer spending

Inflation hits everyone differently. Lower-income households spend a bigger share of their income on food, rent and gasoline, so they are the most sensitive to rising prices. Higher-income households have a cushion of rising asset values, and their spending power is less affected. By some estimates, the top 10% of households by income account for nearly half of all consumer spending. Economists call this split “K-shaped” consumption.

Here is a classic trap: a good company is not the same as a good price. Warehouse clubs are widely seen as a great business, and the trading-down narrative holds up, but if the stock already trades at a price-to-earnings ratio (P/E) in the dozens, the growth the narrative brings has long been priced in. Within the same narrative, a cheaper company the market has overlooked is often the better vehicle.

Payment networks are another clever way to express the theme: inflation pushes up the nominal amount people spend, so payment companies that charge a fee on transaction value see their revenue grow along with inflation, without bearing the pressure of rising product costs.

Agriculture: essential demand inside a cycle

Demand for agriculture is very stable, but prices are cyclical. Fertilizer, seeds, farm machinery and grain trading each have their own cycle:

• Fertilizer: prices swing widely with natural gas (the feedstock for nitrogen fertilizer), geopolitical conflict and grain prices. Fertilizer stocks look cheapest at the price peak, because that is when earnings are highest. This is the classic trap of cyclical stocks.
• Grain trading and processing: these businesses earn the spread on transport, storage and processing, so earnings are relatively stable, and they often pay a dividend.
• Broad agriculture ETFs (such as MOO) cover several links at once.

Agriculture is a “wait for the price” theme: buy in stages near the bottom of the cycle, when dividend yields are higher, and hold patiently into the next cycle, instead of chasing in on headlines about soaring grain prices.

Healthcare and longevity: people are trying to buy more time

Population aging is one of the few trends you can predict decades in advance. More older people means steadily rising demand for medical devices, surgery, drugs and care services. There are several ways to express this theme, with very different levels of risk:

Healthcare also has a big new variable from recent years: GLP-1 weight-loss drugs. They affect not only drugmakers but possibly the long-term demand for food, beverages, medical devices and even airlines (fuel savings from lower average passenger weight). This is a good exercise in using second-order thinking to find winners and losers.

What household themes have in common

Demand for these themes is very certain, so their biggest risk is usually not demand but valuation and policy: drug price negotiations, health insurance reimbursement rules, food safety and subsidy policy. They work as the stable part of a portfolio, built up slowly with shares. They are not suited to betting on short-term swings with short-term options.

Elections don't change the fact that people need to eat and use electricity, but they do change who pays, who gets subsidies and who gets taxed. You study policy cycles to judge how far a theme can run, not to bet on who will win.

Incentives in an election year

Those in power generally want a stable economy and a rising stock market before an election. In the US, the president's party has lost House seats in the midterm elections again and again throughout history, so in the year before a midterm, policymakers tend to have less tolerance for a big market drop.

This creates what the market calls the “policy put”: when a market drop is caused by policy itself, policymakers have an incentive to adjust the policy to stop the slide. The tariff pause in April 2025 is one example; the violent swings in the Treasury market at the time are widely seen as one of the reasons for the pause.

How far each policy area swings

Different policy areas change by very different amounts after a change of government. The table below doesn't judge which policies are better; it only describes how much each one swings with the political cycle:

A practical rule: keep long-term positions in high-consensus themes, and trade high-swing themes only with a time limit. If you must hold a high-swing theme, cut the position before the election to a level you can live with “no matter which side wins.”

Volatility around elections

The options market prices in elections. In the week or month that contains election day, implied volatility (IV) on index options is usually noticeably higher than before or after. As with data release days, you can use the method from the Macro Trading Framework handbook to work out the expected move for election day alone, then compare it with your own view. Once the result is in, the uncertainty is gone and IV often falls quickly; people who bought protection and didn't get a big move lose money as volatility drops.

Once the results are in, the sectors most sensitive to policy react first: energy, healthcare, financials, defense, clean energy, and tariff-sensitive importers. The first-day reaction is often overdone, because the market is pricing “the most extreme version of the policy,” while the policy that actually takes effect is usually watered down by Congress and the courts.

Fiscal policy, government bonds and the central bank

Every government wants lower borrowing costs. The market cares about two things: whether the fiscal deficit keeps widening, and whether the central bank can make decisions independently, based on inflation and employment. When the market worries about either one, the term premium on long-term government bonds rises, gold strengthens and the dollar may weaken. Chapters 3 and 4 of the Macro Trading Framework handbook explain the mechanics in detail.

As an investor, neither question requires you to take a political stance. You only need to watch long-term yields, gold and the dollar together, and see whether the market is pricing in credibility risk.

Keep your politics out of your positions

1. Write about policy, not parties. In your investment notes, write “defense budget growing,” not “Party X will win, so buy defense.”
2. Run the “change-of-government test.” For each theme, ask: if the other side were in power, would this theme still hold? Only the part that still holds belongs in your core position.
3. Read both sides. Following media from only one point of view makes you systematically overestimate the odds that the policies you support will succeed.
4. Don't trade slogans. Until a statement on social media becomes an order, a law or a budget, it is worth at most a small short-term trade.
5. Size positions to survive any election result. Betting on an election result is not fundamentally different from betting on a coin toss.

Picking the right theme is only the start. How you buy, how much you buy, whether you use options and when you admit you're wrong decide how much you finally take away from a correct narrative.

Layer 1: dollar-cost averaging into ETFs

For most themes, the simplest approach is to pick one or two thematic ETFs and buy a fixed dollar amount every month:

• Decide how much to invest each month first, then decide what to buy. Keep the amount small enough that you can keep investing through a big market drop.
• Check once a month, not every day. What you're checking is whether the narrative has changed, not whether the price has gone up.
• If the narrative hasn't changed, keep investing. If your invalidation criteria are met, stop adding money, then decide whether to sell.
• An ETF spreads out single-company risk; it doesn't let you stop thinking. You still need to check the evidence for the theme once a quarter.

Layer 2: individual stocks in two baskets

You can remember the rules for the higher-risk basket with three words: Small, Lazy, Late. Small positions, so that no single failure hurts the whole portfolio. Lazy: trade rarely and give the narrative time. Late: wait for the evidence before you get in, even if it means missing the earliest part of the rally.

Buy the stock or sell a put?

A simple rule of thumb:

For example: the stock is at $50 and IV is 45%. You sell a put that expires in 30 days with a strike of $47.5 and collect about $1.40 in premium. The probability of being assigned (buying the stock at $47.5) is about 36%. If the stock rises to $57.5 a month later, the person who bought the stock has made $7.5, while the put seller has made only $1.40. So selling puts suits underlyings where you can say, “If it falls, I'm happy to buy; if it rises, I won't mind missing it.”

Covered calls: premium is not profit

Selling calls against shares you own and collecting premium every month is the most common way to enhance income. But first, look clearly at what it costs:

Two principles:

• High implied volatility is often there because the market really does see high risk. Behind a fat premium there is often an event such as an earnings report, a lawsuit or a regulatory approval.
• If you would regret having the shares called away, you shouldn't have sold the call in the first place. Don't sell covered calls on the stocks you like most and least want to sell.

By how well they suit covered calls, you can sort your holdings into four groups: moderately volatile stocks you'd be fine having called away (a good fit); more volatile stocks that need more active management (doable, but watch them closely); stocks you especially like and don't want to sell (only under certain conditions); and stocks where you haven't finished building the position (get the stock entry right first, then think about selling options).

Real diversification is about sources of risk

Owning twenty stocks doesn't mean you're diversified. Group your holdings by the risk they really depend on:

If fifteen of your twenty stocks are in the first row, you have really made only one trade.

Cash is a position

Holding cash when there are no good prices is an active decision. Thematic investing especially needs cash: good themes always have pullbacks, and during a pullback only those with cash on hand can buy. Know clearly what you're waiting for: a price, an event or a data point. If you can't say what your cash is waiting for, it will soon be spent on impulsive trades.

Turn the previous ten chapters into something you can use again and again. The ETFs in the table are only examples to help you find what to research, not recommendations. Checklist ticks are saved only in your own browser.

Theme map

Narrative card template

Fill in a card for every theme you research. Take it out three months later and compare: which calls were right, and which evidence has changed.

Theme:
One-line narrative: over the next few years, the world will be forced to spend money on ___________
Policy stage: statement / executive order / legislation / budget / actual spending
Political support: one party / some cross-party / bipartisan consensus
Change-of-government test: would it still hold if the other side were in power? ___
Unavoidable beneficiaries:
My vehicle: ETF / lower-risk stock / higher-risk stock (Small. Lazy. Late.)
Valuation and crowding:
Entry plan: waiting for what price / what event / what data
Position limit:
Invalidation criteria (facts, not prices):
  1.
  2.
Strongest counterargument:
Next review date:

Four checklists

Scenario exercises

Work out your own answer first, then open the item to compare.

Key terms

The main terms in this handbook, in the order they first appear.

Further reading and sources

• Chris Miller, Chip War—how semiconductors became the core of great-power competition.
• Daniel Yergin, The New Map—the new landscape of energy, geopolitics and conflict between nations.
• Ray Dalio, Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order—the rise and fall of great powers and the long cycles of the monetary order.
• Ed Conway, Material World—the six basic materials the modern economy depends on.
• Sources: the US Congress bill database (congress.gov), the federal spending database (USAspending.gov), tariff announcements from the Office of the US Trade Representative, and company earnings call transcripts.