Dow, S&P 500, Nasdaq rise as Wall Street braces for election results

US stocks closed firmly in the green on Tuesday as investors flocked to the polls to decide who will become the next president: Republican nominee Donald Trump or Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) led the gains, rising about 1.4%, while the benchmark S&P 500 (^GSPC) moved up roughly 1.2%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) jumped 1%, or more than 400 points, as stocks rebounded from a losing day.

The S&P 500 is up a little more than 1% as Americans and anxiously await results on the 2024 presidential race.

The rally Tuesday furthered a trend that’s been seen for most of the year in the major indexes. Through October, the S&P 500 (^GSPC) had risen about 20%, good for its best gains in the first 10 months of an election year through at least 1950.

Strategists have warned that this up-and-to-the-right rally could be tested should the election not be decided quickly.

But once an outcome is known, markets typically rally. The S&P 500 has been higher the month after the election in 6 of the past 10 cycles, per research from Carson Group chief markets strategist Ryan Detrick. Over the next three months, the S&P 500 was higher 8 of 10 times.

“We could see a jolt of volatility and a knee-jerk reaction once there is more clarity on the election outcome or if the election results take longer to be known,” Truist co-chief investment officer Keith Lerner wrote in a note to clients on Monday. “Regardless, our view is investors should continue to focus on the primary trend and try to filter out the short-term noise.”

Trump Media & Technology Group stock (DJT) was halted for volatility in late afternoon trading on Tuesday as investors brace for more wild swings with Election Day underway in the US.

Shares quickly erased 15% gains and reversed Monday’s double-digit percentage rise to kick off the week.

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.

Trump maintains a roughly 60% interest in DJT. At current levels of around $34 a share, Trump Media boasts a market cap of about $6.9 billion, giving the former president a stake worth around $4.1 billion.

Boeing (BA) shares retreated from modest gains in late afternoon trading on Tuesday after the company struck a deal with its machinists union Monday evening. 59% of the group voted to approve the deal and end the nearly two-month-long strike, which cost the company billions.

While the union did not get the restoration of pensions it fought for, workers will receive a 38% wage increase over the next four years, a $12,000 cash bonus to hourly workers, and a boost in contributions to retirement savings plans.

Analysts said the resolution of the strike should set the stage for a Boeing recovery. The stock has declined roughly 40% since the start of the year.

“Boeing CEO, Kelly Ortberg, added another check to the ‘Boeing Turnaround’ list,” Bank of America analysts wrote in a note to clients on Tuesday, although the group warned that any type of recovery won’t happen overnight.

“While the strike ending and workers returning to the shopfloor is a meaningful step in the right direction, ramping [production] back up will take time.”

Read more here.

Yahoo Finance’s Ben Werschkul reports:

New economic policy promises typically aren’t rolled out during the final weeks of a presidential campaign. But that’s one more norm Donald Trump and his allies have been upending in recent days.

The pledges have been coming fast and furious, including one last escalation of Trump’s tariff promises on the final day of campaigning, with the former president pledging to impose new blanket tariffs on Mexico.

“You’re the first ones I’ve told it to,” Trump told a crowd in Raleigh, N.C., on the last full day of campaigning Monday. “Congratulations, North Carolina.”

It’s a pledge that came alongside recent discussions from Trump and his allies of dramatically changing course on a signature Biden-era semiconductor bill that has catalyzed over $400 billion in semiconductor sector investments. There has even been renewed talk of repealing the Affordable Care Act.

Whether all of this helps Trump’s chance in a toss-up contest remains to be seen, but it’s yet another factor for last-minute voters to consider as the 2024 contest reaches its end.

Read more here.

In addition to Palantir (PLTR) and Trump Media & Technology Group (DJT), some of Tuesday’s key stock movers included newly public AI hardware firm Astera Labs (ALAB), Tesla (TSLA), Nvidia (NVDA), and other AI chip stocks.

Shares of Nvidia jumped 2.5% midday, while its manufacturer, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSM), rose 2.9%.

Chip stocks, including Intel (INTC), Broadcom (AVGO), and Qualcomm (QCOM), also rose amid further evidence of strong AI data center demand evidenced by Astera Labs’ sunny third quarter earnings Monday. Astera Labs itself was a top gainer Tuesday, rising roughly 30%.

Meanwhile, Tesla shares rose 4% as the US presidential election outcome loomed.

Analysts’ takes were mixed on how Tesla would fare under either candidate — with some seeing the company benefiting from a Trump presidency while others say the EV industry would suffer under Trump. Its CEO, Elon Musk, has been one of Trump’s key surrogates in the final months of the campaign.

Asset manager Apollo Global Management (APO) jumped 6% after quarterly earnings showed its assets reached $733 billion. (Disclosure: Yahoo Finance is owned by Apollo Global Management.)

On the other side of the spectrum, Tuesday’s major losers were mining giant Cleveland-Cliffs (CLF) — which saw shares fall more than 7% after an earnings miss in part due to its exposure to the auto industry — and drugmaker AstraZeneca (AZN) — which is attempting to break into the massive weight-loss drug market. Its stock fell as much as 7% in response.

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.

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.

Read the full story here.

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.

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.

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.

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.