Why investors must ignore political noise

“Politics is the art of postponing decisions until they are no longer relevant,” said three-time French prime minister Henri Queuille. American economist Milton Friedman expressed a similar sentiment, albeit less charitably: “If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there’d be a shortage of sand.” There is no doubt that politics – or, more accurately, the economic uncertainties being generated by politics – are causing increasing anxiety among investors and corporate decision-makers. At the time of writing, Europe’s markets have received a boost,...