As the US president-elect Donald Trump begins assembling his team, it is becoming clearer what his proposed policies might look like. This in turn allows us to begin fleshing out an investment plan.

To begin with, the election of a president of the world’s most influential nation in politics, economics and culture always creates uncertainty. A relatively known politician who has held several political positions over a long time, such as Bill Clinton, creates the least uncertainty as one can usually extrapolate his behaviour.

A less well-known politician with a short political life, such as Barack Obama, will cause an increase in uncertainty. Relevant for us is the example of his attempted disengagement of America as global policeman, or, in political jargon, the beginning of the end of America as the indispensable nation. This was a bit of a shock in our region.

Mr Trump is a complete game changer in the sense that he does not have a political career that investors can review to glean information from, he did not outline any detailed policies instead giving his vision, and he was courting what appears to be a completely new demographic that is focused on issues the traditional two parties have ignored. These three issues create tremendous uncertainty and therefore the first conclusion is that geopolitical and economic risk premiums need to go up. If they don’t then you are not being paid properly for your risk.

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Politics often plays a major role in influencing global economies and financial markets. Because of the size of its economy, the US takes the lead in political influence, and in seven days the most significant event in American politics, the election of the next president, takes place.

One of the main tenets of any American presidential campaign is the creation of jobs by improving the economy. These days the campaigns seem to resort to three economic pillars – and a xenophobic one.

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I am in New York, the primary financial centre in the world, visiting asset managers. The smallest of these managers has a total of about US$500 billion under management. According to the World Bank, the total market capitalisation of domestic listed companies in the UAE was about $195bn at the end last year. The UAE has two primary stock markets, a federal level market regulator in the SCA and at least two offshore financial centres in the DIFC and ADGM, each of which is regulated independently of the other and the SCA.

Maybe looking at total numbers doesn’t make sense as different countries have different GDPs. Fortunately for us the World Bank provides market size as a percentage of GDP. For the UAE, the total market cap of domestic listed companies is 53 per cent of GDP as of the end of last year; for the US it was 140 per cent. For Singapore, a country often held up as a model for the UAE to learn from if not emulate, market cap is 219 per cent of GDP.

For Saudi Arabia, which many assume lags the UAE in fin­ancial innovation, the number is 65 per cent. What saddens me is that the world average is 99 per cent and in terms of the size of our markets relative to GDP we are roughly half the global average.

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Last week saw some interesting news reports. A leading one was around Emirati Women’s Day. A raft of announcements in support of Emirati women declared the appointment, or intention to appoint, women to senior positions across the public and private sectors. Such decisions are welcome but are not enough to ensure gender equality. This requires the enactment of laws that criminalises gender discrimination and the creation of support departments for women who have been discriminated against. This is good for the economy. I have hear that women make up around 50% of the Emirati population and are therefore an important demographic.

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