Friends
It was quite a night of political theater last night, wasn’t it? There are still votes to count, but it appears that Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden may be the winner, and the Senate, it appears, will remain in the hands of the Republicans. Of course, this is 2020 and we have come to expect that anything can happen, so we’ll have to just let all of this play out.
Stocks seemed to be oblivious to it all (or it is exactly what they wanted) as the market averages moved higher throughout the morning. The winners were the big name tech stocks, while industrials and materials were the losers (is the likelihood of a huge infrastructure bill now out the window?). Anyway, by the close the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 367 points to finish the day at 27,847. The S&P 500 was up 74 points to close at 3,443. The Nasdaq Composite Index was up 430 points to close at 11,590. Gold was down $9 to trade at $1,900 per ounce, while oil was up $1.32 to trade at $38.98 per barrel WTI.
This very close and contentious election is likely to see challenges, recounts, and lawsuits before it’s all over. Will that finally weigh on the markets? We will see soon enough. At least no cities are burning at the moment (that I know of anyway). Let’s hope we can get through all of this in a peaceful and dignified manner. Well, one can only hope.
Have a nice evening everyone.
