Local financial advisors weigh in on the DOW’s movement

Tuesday night had many people worried about Donald Trump’s win, and we’re not talking about Trump directly this time — the stock market had a huge drop during Tuesday night’s election results.

Futures for the DOW on Tuesday predicted that the market wouldn’t have a great day Wednesday morning based on Trump being the nation’s president-elect. Nevertheless, the markets opened up and did fine Wednesday morning.

One financial expert KIFK/KIDK talked to predicted this was going to happen to the market if Trump won. And another expert is making sure her clients aren’t making big moves on, what she calls, an emotional reaction to something that really doesn’t have that big of a lasting effect on the market.

“Everybody had predicted Hillary — it was kind of a return to the status quo. And then with Trump, a lot of things were kind of up in the air. I use the analogy of like a ‘bull in a china shop.’ Nobody quite knew exactly how the market would take it,” said Jackson Wood, a financial advisor at Carol Holm Financial.

“It was just kind of a strange roller coaster, I guess, with people’s expectations and the emotion driving the market one way or the other,” said Jennifer Landon, a financial advisor at Journey Financial.

The DOW did have a nice comeback from its big fall of more than 800 points Tuesday night. Some advisors, like Wood, had the prediction of the DOW’s fall right.

“We’ve been preparing for uncertainty in the markets since November of 2015. The economy is very weak, the financial markets were very over-inflated and with the political arena being Trump and Clinton — and how crazy that was — there was a lot of uncertainty,” said Wood.

In addition, advisors like Landon knew that people would make more of a fuss over the election effecting the market more than they ought to.

“In reality, Apple releasing a new iPhone probably has more real lasting effects on the market than the election,” Landon said.

Historically, presidential elections do have some effects on the market, but not usually anything longstanding — at least until new policies are actually put in place.

“As far as east Idaho is concerned, I believe that we don’t need to be worried financially speaking with the effects on the market. We just have to be really careful when we’re making investment decisions — that we’re basing our information on fact and not on emotion,” said Landon.

With Republicans taking the presidency, the House and the Senate, many things can change: government regulations, decreases in taxes, and even the repeal of ObamaCare. But as of now, there are no real changes that have been made yet, to put that lasting mark on the economy.

“I think that the Trump presidency ensures that we’re going to take our foot off of our own economy and we’ll get back to growing the economy the old-fashioned way. I think that there’s room to be optimistic. There’s definitely ideas and things that we can be afraid of and uncertainty, but economically it’s a good thing to get the government out of the way and kind of grow the economy the old-fashioned way,” said Wood.

If you are concerned about the election affecting your individual finances, have a talk with your financial advisor and make sure you’re on the right track with your expectations.