Nobody cares about your political opinions. Neither does the market.

It’s more than politics or investing. It’s your brain.

There has been much noise in the last couple of days about the arrest of Venezuelan dictator Maduro by the United States of America—about how it will affect oil prices, investments in Latin America, and also the geopolitical implications.

Everyone is guilty of having a political opinion—even me. But it is an issue when “financial influencers” spread the political noise to their thousands of followers. One of the most absurd claims, for example, was that the US government could repay half its debt with Venezuelan oil.

Do they think you just stick a pipe into the ground and refined petroleum products come out? What about the capital expenditures required to rebuild Venezuela’s oil infrastructure? Who will pay for that? And under what legal protections?

And then, there’s that very famous author who wrote a best-selling personal finance book and has gone berserk since then, crying about the imminent collapse of the Dollar for years. The fall of the Maduro regime is a good thing for the Dollar, but his post to his millions of followers was about how he predicted everything.

This goes far beyond Venezuela. It happens every time there’s a political shock.

The only reason these work on us is not because we are dumb, falling for mountebanks. It’s because as social animals, our brains are wired to react to politics. You need to have an opinion to be accepted by the group. Unfortunately, this mindset is not only detrimental to your investments but also to your life.

And I don’t think you can eliminate political noise in your investments if you don’t know how to do it in your life.

"One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors."

This quote from Plato’s Republic is often interpreted as to why it is important to have a political opinion. There is also the saying that if you stay silent, you’re on the side of the oppressor. So speaking about it puts you on the right side of history, right?

We need to look at the context when Plato wrote that. He was living in Athens, a popular democracy, where every male citizen directly voted on every matter. If you didn’t express your opinion, you were going to be governed by someone louder than you. We don’t have this today. We express our opinions through elections. We delegate the task of writing laws to elected officials. It is their job to have a political opinion, not yours.

You may argue that you need to have one so that you know who to vote for. I have voted twice in my life (I’m not that old) and both times I spent one hour on the eve of the election studying the different political parties before making a decision. Why waste five years on a decision that can take one hour?

On the grand scale of things, it doesn’t matter much who won an election in which year. Was Jimmy Carter a bad president? Was Ronald Reagan a great president? Half of the US population thinks that. But would we have had Ronald Reagan without Jimmy Carter? You cannot go into the past and change history. But you can act on things now.

And then, there are things that you have an opinion about that have no effect on you, other than making you worry for no reason. The best example would be the Israel–Palestine conflict. Everyone seems to have a VERY LOUD opinion about it. Whether there should be one or two or twenty states on the narrow strip of land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, matters mostly to the people who live there. And whatever your opinion is doesn’t change anything on the ground. If you’re an American or investing in America, it matters to you because it affects America’s sphere of influence. But once again, your elected politicians have to deal with it, not you. Don’t make faraway conflicts a core part of your identity.

This is not what Plato meant when he called for political participation. He wrote that book for the inhabitants of city-states, people who in most cases knew each other. The politics of people living in other countries did not have any effect on him, unless Athens was under attack by that country.

And the media—whether mainstream or social—knows how to leverage our primal emotions, with information about everything happening in every corner of the world broadcast to us. Who doesn’t feel sad when they see a child dying on TV in some war-ridden African country? It’s in our nature to care about children. And expressing your uninformed opinion about it is just you feeling good about yourself—feeling that you’re doing something good. But are you? Or are you just fueling your narcissism? You like it or not, there’s nothing you can do to help that dying child. But you can be a better parent to your children. Or you can go to your local orphanage and help.

I’m not calling for political apathy but rather spending your limited time and energy on things that can have the biggest impact on your life. If you want to fight climate change, please study nuclear physics, or invest in renewable energy companies, or if you want something simpler, clean the filters of your air-conditioner more often, but it helps no one if you’re going to throw tomato soup on a painting or bully people on social media. That’s just making noise and making people despise you.

As an investor (or just a human being), you need to know how to get rid of all these noises. It’s getting harder as the world keeps getting noisier. Just turn off your TV, buy a history book, and zoom out. You’ll see how little the things happening in the world matter. And you’ll understand that this is the best time to be alive.

There’s this famous chart of the 120 years of the Dow Jones, where you see all the major political events listed. The stock market still went up long-term. And if you invest in wonderful companies, you have to worry even less.

The actions you can take as an investor are to do proper research, to test products, to watch interviews of management. But beyond that there’s very little you can do. Just like as a citizen, you’re delegating tasks to your elected officials, as an investor, you’re delegating tasks to the management of the companies. It is the CEO who has to think about tariffs and how to deal with them, not you. And if you choose a good CEO, why worry about it?

Political turmoil can also create opportunities.

I invested in ZIM, an Israeli shipping company, one month before the October 7th attack in 2023. The stock crashed by about 50% with all the disturbances after that, including the disruptions in the Suez Canal. I saw that as an opportunity since freight costs were going to increase and I bought more shares. I more than doubled my investment in a year.

This is just one example. I invested in British companies on the day of the Brexit referendum results. I invested in China during their economic crisis.

But to take advantage of these opportunities, you need to learn how to distance yourself from political noise. Even if you hold strong opinions, make a habit of talking to people who think differently from you. In most cases, disagreement isn’t a sign of bad faith—it’s a sign that our brains are wired differently. As an investor, it helps to have people respectfully challenging your theses.

If this idea resonates, add Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind to your reading list. It’s a useful reminder that moral and political disagreements are often psychological before they are ideological. Learning this doesn’t just make you a better investor—it also helps you keep friends who see the world differently.