Political passion and profitable investing don’t mix

Turns out that it’s hard to invest profitably when you’re wearing political blinders.

What counts in investing isn’t the world as you’d like it to be but the world as it is.

Yesterday, on the day after the evening when Democrats in the House succeeded in passing the Senate’s version of a health insurance reform bill, my e-mail box overflowed with predictions of a crash in the stock market, or of a rout in healthcare and drug stocks, and indeed of the end of just about everything.

Drug stocks crashed so hard they rallied. Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY) climbed 1.8%. Pfizer (PFE) was up 1.4%.

Among the insurers WellPoint (WLP) was indeed down by 1.1% but Aetna (AET) was up 0.5%.

I guess the market will have to wait another day for the Nancy Pelosi apocalypse that some of my e-mail predicted.

Every investor has a political opinion, often passionately held. We all believe our community, the country, the world would be better if it went down Path A and eschewed Path B.

We get into trouble as investors when we allow that belief in Path A and that dislike for Path B to prevent us from seeing the stock market as it is. Read more

40% of employers to hike cost of health insurance in 2010, Kaiser survey finds

It’s the incredible shrinking benefit.

Next year, like the current year and the year before that and the…, employer-provided health insurance will cost workers more. And fewer workers will get that  benefit from their jobs at all.

40% of employers surveyed by the Kaiser Family Foundation as part of its annual poll say that in 2010 they will increase the co-pays that workers will have to take out of their own pockets when they see a doctor. About the same percentage say they will raise annual deductibles and raise the charge for prescription drugs. A slightly higher percentage, 41%, say they will increase what workers pay in premiums.

Oh, and 8% say they plan to drop coverage entirely. (About 9% say they will tighten eligibility for health benefits. No telling how many workers will lose insurance because of those changes.)

 The numbers in the Kaiser survey are actually somewhat more positive than those in other recent surveys. (Now doesn’t that make you feel better?) Read more