Subject: Re: Investing with an eye on rising authoritarianism
But dammit Jim, I’m looking for some easy answers from you!

Dammit Jim, I'm a doctor, not a macroeconomist!

(no, I'm not a doctor, it's a Trek reference...)

What can one suggest?
The US market is very large, very diversified, very profitable, and is set up honestly enough for small investors to do well. Current and historical information about the firms is very widely available in easy to understand and easy to compare formats. There are several jurisdictions where I would consider it very safe to invest, but the very best tend to have markets dominated by only 2-3 sectors. So there just aren't very many markets in the world that meet the criteria available in the US.

So, the best bet might be to stick with the US market, but shift emphasis towards a bit of safety. Do what you can to avoid outsized allocations to firms that are unusually sensitive to whatever you perceive the risks might be. That might be anything from exposure to government contracts through to the nasty zone where a falling dollar mixes with inflation.

The first thing that springs to mind as a possible step towards safety: a quant strategy that is very broad and boring, then simply prune several positions by hand to remove the ones that come to the top of your risky list. This is the sort of thing I mean, a 40 stock portfolio as suggested http://www.datahelper.com/mi/s...
The screen definition was refined a bit in the course of the thread, but the exact original versions in the first post have done this in the 4.1 years since:
S&P 500 total return: 18.3%/year
Screen total return, version not requiring a dividend: 19.1%/year
Screen total return, version requiring a dividend: 25.0%/year

I currently have real money in the latter (using a couple of very tiny variations in the definition). The method I use to calculate the picks starts by eliminating a few tickers and a few industries.

That being said, I haven't figured out how to merely eliminate a few companies in a way that meaningfully reduces my exposure to the broad consequences of civil war. (the modern guerrilla and bombing style, not pitched battle style like last time). It's not something I expect, please don't jump on me. But let's just say it's not something I'd completely rule out as being 100% impossible. I think it's a very real tail risk. The question is whether it's so far out on the tail that a prudent safety-oriented person can ignore it...or not.

Another approach is to liquidate a big portion of your portfolio and put it into inflation-protected government bonds from a mix of different first-world countries. At certain times, and/or for a certain portion of one's portfolio, return OF capital is more important than return ON capital. Per Robert's Rules of Order, a motion to adjourn is always in order. If you can't see a way to win the game, you don't have to play the game. FWIW, Canada real return bonds are at about inflation+1.56%, UK linker gilts are another reasonable choice.

Jim