Here’s how the US stock market reacts on Election Day – National
U.S. stock indexes are rising Tuesday as voters head to the polls on the final day of the presidential election.
The S&P 500 was up 0.4% in early trading, closing in on its record set last month. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 66 points, or 0.2%, as of 9:35 a.m. Eastern Time, and the Nasdaq Composite Index was up 0.6%.
Excitement over the artificial intelligence boom has helped increase Wall Streetas has been the case for much of the last year. Software company Palantir Technologies jumped 16.7% after generating profits and revenue above analysts’ expectations for the latest quarter. It’s an industry known for thinking and talking big, and CEO Alexander Karp said, “We completely gutted this quarter, driven by relentless demand for AI that won’t slow down.” »
Boeing rose 0.1% after its striking factory workers voted in favor of the aerospace giant’s latest contract offer. Ratification clears the way for Boeing to restart assembly lines in the Pacific Northwest, idled for 53 days, and resume production of its best-selling jetliner.
They helped offset Wynn Resorts’ 5.2% decline after the casino operator’s results for the latest quarter came in below analysts’ forecasts.
The main event, however, remains the election, even if the result won’t be known for days, weeks or months while officials count all the votes. Such uncertainty could disrupt markets, as well as an upcoming Federal Reserve meeting on interest rates later this week. It is widely expected to cut its main interest rate for the second time in a row.
Despite all the uncertainty heading into the final day of voting, many professional investors suggest staying focused on the long term and how companies’ profits will pan out over the next few years and decade. Stocks have always tended to rise regardless of which party wins the White House.
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The S&P 500 rose in 73% of the years a Democrat was president and 70% of the years a Republican was the nation’s chief executive, from 1945 to the end of last month, according to Sam Stovall, a strategist in head of investments at CFRA.
The U.S. stock market has tended to rise more when Democrats were president, in part because a loss under George W. Bush hurt the Republican average. Bush took over as the dot-com bubble deflated and left office as the 2008 global financial crisis and Great Recession devastated markets.
Besides the identity of the president, other questions weigh on the market, including whether the White House will work with a unified Congress or divided along party lines, as well as whether the results will be contested.
The general hope among investors is often shared control of the U.S. government, because that will likely maintain the status quo and avoid big changes that could send the country’s debt soaring.
When it comes to a contested election, Wall Street has some precedent to look to. In 2000, the S&P 500 fell 5% about five weeks after Election Day, before Al Gore conceded to George W. Bush. But it also happened during the halving of the S&P 500 index between March 2000 and October 2002, when the dot-com bubble deflated.
Four years ago, the S&P 500 index was up the day after the polls closed, even if the winner was not yet clearly determined. And it continued to rise even after former President Donald Trump refused to concede and disputed the results, creating much uncertainty. Much of the rise was due to excitement over the potential for a COVID-19 vaccine, which had just crippled the global economy.
On the bond market, the yield on 10-year Treasury bills rose from 4.29% to 4.31% Monday evening.
In foreign stock markets, indices were mixed in Europe and Asia. The movements were mostly modest apart from jumps of 2.3% in Shanghai and 2.1% in Hong Kong.
© 2024 The Canadian Press
