Investors are nervous about the 2026 midterms.
Nervous people check charts. Charts say nothing. Charts have never said anything. That is why I like them.
The historical S&P 500 data exists, and CNBC has dutifully dusted it off. Midterm years tend to be choppy. Stocks tend to recover afterward. Neither fact has ever stopped a single person from panic-selling at the bottom.
Think about the people behind these jitters. They own a stock market. They also own a theory about Congress. One of those things has a price history. The other has a podcast.
Here is the fake corporate update. Midterm Anxiety Holdings, ticker JTTR, announced Tuesday that it will continue to worry about an event with a known date, a known format, and a known outcome category: some people win, some people lose, and the market opens the next morning anyway.
Elections do not hide. They sit on the calendar for two years. You can see them coming from space. You still managed to get jittery, like a man startled by his own birthday.
The retail investor's plan is to read a historical chart, nod slowly, and then do the opposite out of respect for tradition. He will buy the rally after the election. He will sell the dip before it. He will call this a strategy and tell his brother-in-law.
I look at the S&P 500 and see a line. It goes up, down, and sideways. Sometimes a politician stands near it. The line does not acknowledge him.
If your portfolio can't survive a Tuesday in November, it was never a portfolio. It was a hostage situation you set up yourself.
Photo by Oren Elbaz on Unsplash
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