2026 has started with a bang

I had intended to next focus on climate adaptation investing as an underestimated investment opportunity. However, mere hours after I posted the first article for the Resilient Investor underscoring that political risk is core to portfolio resilience, the US military captured and extradited Venezuelan President Maduro on drug charges.

The details of the event have been widely covered, so I will not rehash them here. Nor am I going to give an opinion on the legality or ethics of the actions; there are plenty of lawyers and political pundits taking up that mantle.

The purpose of the Resilient Investor is to provide investors with tools to understand the market implications when political events occur. The US action in Venezuela is a useful opportunity to introduce some of these tools.

Everyone is biased

There is a tendency when political events like this happen for investors to opt into punditry rather than analysis mode. This is to be expected: news flow is intense, clients have questions, and political narratives arrive fully formed and emotionally charged.

As I’ve pointed out before, investment teams rarely have political economists. So, when an event happens, analysis on desk often falls to company analysts and those with a personal interest in politics.

Personal interest is a dangerous thing when it comes to political analysis because it usually comes alongside a generous helping of personal bias or activism. Nobody is without political bias. Not me. Not you. Nobody.

But, in the same way that investors warn against buying the stock of your favourite fashion designer or sports provider out of personal interest, investors should be mindful of these biases and try to put in place tools to counteract them.

A Base Case Builder for Investors

Having even a simple analytical framework can help investors clarify their own thinking and, crucially, articulate it clearly to colleagues and clients. It also provides a shared language — a lingua franca — for debating political developments constructively within investment teams.

This works well for building an initial base case for any ex-post event analysis, e.g. the US actions in Venezuela. It can also be adapted for future event analysis with the use of scenarios, which I’ll lay out in a future piece.

This framework is not complex. Its value lies in the structure it imposes. Rather than descending into debate about legality or moral righteousness, it forces attention back onto systematically analysing the elements that matter for market returns.

Of course, discretion remains — particularly when assessing the market impacts. Investors are paid for their interpretation of market impacts, and different portfolios will naturally have exposure to different sectors, geographies, and time horizons. The framework does not eliminate judgement; it structures it.

Fitting events within existing themes

Often, the most impactful aspects of a political shock is not the discrete event itself, but the way it interacts with existing macro-political themes. Venezuela is a useful case in point.

The investment relevance of political themes varies widely, depending not only on the theme itself but also on an investor’s portfolio exposure and time horizon. One investor’s market-defining political shift may be another’s storm in a teacup.

(As an aside, it is easy to be drawn into debates about political events or trends simply because of extensive media coverage or personal interest. Focusing instead on their investment relevance saves both time and analytical bandwidth.)

These longer-term themes matter because markets often observe limited immediate impacts from a political event — as has, so far, been the case with the US–Venezuela episode — and conclude that the event is therefore immaterial for portfolios.

By analysing how discrete events affect underlying political themes over longer horizons, investors can better understand the shifting structural forces that ultimately shape long-term portfolio returns.

The Event: US intervention in Venezuela

Market-relevant additional details: Intention to allow US companies to tap the country’s extensive oil resources; Tentative and conditional support for newly sworn in President. Heightened concerns among European politicians regarding US intervention in Greenland.

Framework Questions:

• Is this event a one-off, isolated event or is it relevant to a structural theme or themes relevant to markets?
• If structural, does this reinforce or change the course of the trend(s)?

The sample analysis below shows how an event like the US intervention in Venezuela can be analysed against a bigger picture of long term themes driving (in)stability in the macroeconomy affecting policy, trade, sentiment, behaviour and ultimately market returns.

Political Theme	Description	Reinforce or Change Course
Economic and Security Regionalisation	Slowing globalisation leading to more within region/bloc/alliance trade and cooperation on defence. Challenges multilateral organisations, e.g. UN, NATO.	Reinforces by increasing uncertainty regarding US partnership in military matters and international legal agreements. Spillover to trust in economic partnerships.
US Political Realignment (‘Make America Great Again’)	The Republican voter base has shifted on economic and social issues compared to a decade ago, becoming less supportive of free trade and American intervention abroad.	Changes course by calling into question foreign policy retrenchment in ‘America First’ regime. Impact dependent on voter response, domestic challenges and how US intervention in Venezuela
Hard Power Returns	Major powers have increasingly enforced their political agendas through military means, heightening geopolitical instability.	Reinforces by suggesting further military actions that threaten heightened political risk ongoing and calls into question Western cohesion.

In future pieces, I will explore how to adapt this approach for more nuanced analysis using scenario analysis as well as laying out the empirical evidence connecting geopolitical shifts to the global economy and markets.

If this is of interest to you, please do subscribe below or get in touch by emailing [email protected].