For it to matter, you'd need it to surprise markets in some way and/or materially change the cash flows of the economy. Outside of maybe Ken Bone and a few of his ilk, no one is surprised by a bout of US government dysfunction. It sucks for the actual human beings directly impacted, but they are a relatively small number compared to the overall US workforce, and they will largely maintain their spending via credit cards or burning down savings until they are made whole when this nonsense ends. And yet, the talking and writing about this is endless. So my advice is that if you are watching someone talk about this on TV, you should turn off your TV and do literally anything else.

The huge table below reinforces the point by showing the returns of US stocks and bonds during and immediately after every government shutdown in the last 50 years. The most interesting thing about the table is how many rows it has - some version of a shutdown or shutdown bluff has happened on average roughly every 2 years. The average returns during those periods basically look like the average returns of non-shutdown periods, i.e. it doesn't matter. If you want the spreadsheet that generated this table for some ungodly reason, let me know and I'll give it to you. Otherwise I hope this email prevents you from spending another second on this topic and saves you some time and brain damage.