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US stocks traded firmly in the green by mid-morning on Tuesday as Election Day got underway, with investors settling in to see whether Kamala Harris or Donald Trump will shape the economy as the next president.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) led the gains, rising about 1.1%, while the benchmark S&P 500 (^GSPC) moved up roughly 0.9%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) jumped around 0.7% after opening just above the flat line on the heels of a losing day for stocks.
Americans are heading to the polls with Harris and Trump running neck-and-neck after an intensely contested presidential race. Investors are buckling in for market volatility, as the outcome may not become clear for days, or even weeks, if the result is disputed.
Read more: The Yahoo Finance guide to the presidential election and what it means for your wallet
Given the huge difference in the candidates’ stances on the economy, a long wait for a declared winner could inject more uncertainty into markets. But historically, while the lack of a clear victory has brought turbulence in the short term, it has rarely halted the long-term trend for gains.
The dollar (DX-Y.NB) and Treasury yields traded steadily after retreating on Monday as traders dialed back bets on a Trump win. The greenback nudged slightly lower, while the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury (^TNX) ticked about 4 basis points higher.
Dead ahead is the November policy decision from the Federal Reserve, which also has a lot at stake on Election Day. Chair Jerome Powell is overwhelmingly expected to bring in a 25 basis point rate cut at the end of the two-day meeting on Thursday.
Meanwhile, another big batch of quarterly earnings will roll in, with results from struggling AI server maker Super Micro Computer (SMCI) and Ferrari (RACE) on the docket.
The bitter seven-week strike at Boeing (BA) has ended after factory workers voted for a new contract offering a 38% pay hike. The plane maker’s shares still fell around 1% after initially opening the day higher.
LIVE 7 updates
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Pulse check on sector action; Trump, Harris trades
Consumer Discretionary (XLY) and Tech (XLK) led Tuesday’s sector action, with stocks moving higher across the board as Election Day gets underway.
The so-called Trump and Harris trades also saw some movement.
The 10-year Treasury yield (^TNX) moved about 5 basis points higher to trade around 4.35%. Yields are largely expected to remain elevated under a Trump administration since the former president’s tariff policy would likely lead to higher inflation over time.
Bitcoin (BTC-USD), which Trump has outwardly supported, saw prices rise around 4% to trade near $70,300 a token. Prices have been lumpy in recent days, however, as Kamala Harris’s odds improved over the weekend.
Given that recent movement, Utilities (XLU) have dropped around 2% over the past five days. Utilities typically fall on higher yields, so if the assumption is that a Harris presidency would be less inflationary compared to Trump, that would lead to a drop in yields and, therefore, the Utilities sector at large.
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Palantir stock soars as Department of Defense spending fuels earnings
Palantir (PLTR) stock surged 22% after the company’s third quarter earnings surpassed Wall Street’s expectations due to a spike in spending from the US Department of Defense on its artificial intelligence tech.
Palantir’s chief revenue and legal officer, Ryan Taylor, said the company’s US government business saw its “strongest sequential growth in 15 quarters driven largely by our DoD [Department of Defense] business’s 21% quarter-over-quarter growth.”
Global government spending on Palantir’s products, primarily from the US, rose 40% from the prior year to $408 million in the third quarter, accounting for 56% of the company’s total revenue for the period. This was ahead of the $379 million expected for the segment, according to Bloomberg consensus estimates.
Overall, the company reported adjusted earnings per share of $0.10 for the quarter, a penny ahead of expectations, on revenue of $725.5 million, which topped the $703.7 million expected by Wall Street analysts.
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DJT rises by double digits as Election Day kicks off
Trump Media & Technology Group stock (DJT) climbed more than 10% higher in early trading on Tuesday, extending its double-digit rise to kick off the week as shares brace for more volatility with Election Day underway in the US.
The stock suffered its largest percentage decline last week and closed down around 20% to end the five-day period on Friday, which shaved off around $4 billion from its market cap. Shares have still more than doubled from their September lows.
The stock’s recovery comes as investors await the election of the next president: Donald Trump or Kamala Harris.
Prior to the recent volatility, shares in the company, the home of the Republican nominee’s social media platform Truth Social, had been on a steady rise as both domestic and overseas betting markets shifted in favor of a Trump victory.
Prediction sites like Polymarket, PredictIt, and Kalshi all showed Trump’s presidential chances ahead of those of Democratic nominee and current Vice President Kamala Harris. That lead, however, narrowed significantly over the weekend as new polling showed Harris surpassing Trump in Iowa, which has historically voted Republican.
And as betting markets tighten, national polls show both candidates in a virtually deadlocked race. Polls in key battleground states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, which are likely to decide the fate of the election, also show razor-thin margins.
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Betting markets, election models point to a close race as voters cast ballots
Here’s what the betting markets and election forecasters are saying as the 2024 campaign comes to an end.
Political betting app Kalshi recently became the first place where Americans could legally wager on the 2024 election — and the bets have flooded in.
Heading into Election Day, the site put Trump’s odds at 57% which was akin to “a very slightly biased coin flip,” Kalshi co-founder Tarek Mansour said in a Yahoo Finance appearance Monday
A compilation of other betting markets from RealClearPolling, spanning other popular sites open to overseas betters from Polymaket to Smarkets, has the odds of a Trump win at 59.2% to 39.3%. Those odds mean that Harris would win almost four contests if the election were run 10 times.
As for the polling-based election models, they projected a tighter race.
Nate Silver’s Silver Bulletin model ran its last update at 12:00 a.m. ET on Nov. 5 and found a nearly exact tie in electoral college probability with Harris winning 50% of the time to 49.6% for Trump.
Silver’s final run featured 80,000 simulations with Harris winning in 40,012 of them, he wrote.
The 538.com election model was another toss-up. It found Harris winning 50 out of 100 simulations. Trump won 49 times out of 100 with a less than 1-in-100 chance of no Electoral College winner.
The final analysis from the Economist magazine found a slight Harris edge with the vice President winning 56 out of 100 hypothetical contests.
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Stocks open higher on Election Day
US stocks opened mostly higher on Tuesday as Election Day got underway. Markets are in wait-and-see mode when it comes to who will end up in the White House: Kamala Harris or Donald Trump.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) led the gains, up 0.5%, while the benchmark S&P 500 (^GSPC) moved up roughly 0.3%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) opened just above the flatline on the heels of a losing day for stocks.
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Good morning. Here’s what’s happening today.
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A good reminder for investors on Election Day
Election Day has arrived.
And with it, all the typical banter about outcomes for the country, world, and markets. Amid the heavy news flow, Truist co-chief investment officer Keith Lerner (who will be on the Opening Bid podcast tomorrow at 8 a.m. ET with his post-election analysis) dropped the helpful chart below.
I think it offers a good reminder that, no matter the outcome of the presidential election, it has paid dividends to be an investor in stocks over time.
