How to prepare your portfolio for a 2024 Trump or Harris election victory

With about a month to go until the 2024 presidential election, investors are bracing for potential market volatility amid uncertainty over whether former President Donald Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris will win in November.

“It’s very important for everyone to remember that there’s a lot of noise, there’s a lot of volatility around the election,” said Seema Shah, global chief strategist at Principal Asset Management. “Really what’s fundamentally driving the markets is going to be what happens with earnings growth, what happens with inflation and what the Fed is going to do.”

Differences between Republican and Democratic economic policies mean there are potentially nuanced ways investors position their portfolios to make money depending on the outcome of the election.

“There will definitely be winners and losers coming out of this election cycle,” said John Mowrey, chief investment officer of NFJ Investment Group. “Depending on what happens with corporate tax rates, what happens with regulation and what happens with geopolitics.”

According to some experts, small-cap stocks could benefit from a second Trump administration.

“If you look after Trump’s election in November 2016, small caps in those initial months performed very well, doubling the performance of the S&P 500,” said Paul Hickey, co-founder of Bespoke Investment Group. “During his administration, performance was in line just under the big caps, but we didn’t have this huge performance gap that we see now between the mega-caps and everything else.”

Renewable energy is one sector that some analysts predict will benefit under a Harris presidency as she tries to build on investments from the Biden administration.

“The most important thing about Harris being in office would be the protection and continued implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act, which is a key legacy of the Biden administration,” said Stephen Myrow, managing partner of Beacon Policy Advisors. “A lot of them haven’t been implemented yet, but this is big for wind and solar, biofuels, nuclear hydrogen.”

Follow up video above to learn which sectors and industries benefit most from each presidential candidate and what investors can do now to best position their portfolios ahead of the 2024 election.