Market watchers look ahead to party conventions with eyes on bottom line

investmentnews.com:

Get on up folks, it’s (political) party time America.

The Republican National Convention kicks off in Milwaukee on Monday night while the Democrats will be gathering only a few weeks later in Chicago. All the networks – not to mention Tweeters, bloggers and other social media influencers – will be spread across the stadium floors covering the action.

Meanwhile, carefully watching the speeches from their homes, offices and home-offices will be fund managers, financial advisors and every-day investors. All of whom tuning in to assess each party’s platform and discern how it will affect their respective portfolios.  

Ahead of those two seismic events, InvestmentNews touched base with a few financial folks to see how this summer’s political pyrotechnics will impact their financial futures.

Ben Cook, portfolio manager for the Hennessy Energy Transition fund, on oil and gas stocks: 

“Historically speaking, a Democrat in the executive branch of the office has actually been better for commodity prices. The policies that typically restrict the projects that ultimately facilitate the production and transportation and storage of energy tend to limit the amount of supply in the market and, and ironically, lift commodity prices, which helps energy producers.”

George Milling-Stanley, chief gold strategist, State Street Global Advisors, on precious metals: 

“Geopolitics is particularly nasty right now and unfortunately in history, whenever the geopolitical situation has been bad, gold has done well. But also the economy is a little rocky, too, with the possibility that the Fed might keep rates too high for too long. Higher for longer is all very well, but too high for too long could push us into recession. That could be very, very