What were reading (11/4)
“What Markets Are Telling Us As Election Results Roll In” (Wall Street Journal). “Markets often get politics wrong, but it is rare to see them price in all three of the plausible results of a presidential election—Republican, Democrat and long-drawn-out legal battle—in one night. Last night delivered exactly that as the voters once again mocked the pollsters. In one way markets did what they should: As the probabilities shifted, prices responded in the direction one would expect. Efficient markets!”
“Wall Street Got The Election Night It Feared The Most” (CNN Business). “[Tuesday night’s election results] left markets hugely exposed to bouts of volatility. US futures swung dramatically Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning. The US dollar gained 0.4% against a basket of top currencies, while heightened demand for benchmark 10-year US Treasuries, a safe haven asset, weighed on yields. Breaking it down: Wall Street bet that former Vice President Joe Biden would win the White House and that Democrats would take control of the Senate, paving the way for a generous fiscal relief package during a difficult winter. Biden still has multiple paths to victory. But results so far have not produced the decisive ‘blue wave’ many investors had been expecting.”
“Stock Futures Edge Higher After Choppy Overnight Trading Amid Wait For Election Results” (Washington Post). “Market futures edged higher early Wednesday as investors grappled with the possibility that final election results could be days away, with key states still tallying millions of votes in the tight contest between President Trump and Joe Biden…’We have seen a market rally for the past two sessions ahead of the election with the hope of ending electoral uncertainty,’ Anthony Denier, chief executive of the mobile-app based brokerage Webull, said in comments emailed to The Post. ‘A contested election is the biggest risk facing the markets amid this election cycle.’”
“Uber Jumps 12%, Lyft Rallies 17% After Californians Vote To Exempt Them From State Labor Law” (CNBC). “Shares of Uber and Lyft were up big in premarket trading after early voting projections suggest that Californians have decided both companies should be exempt from a labor law that aimed to make drivers employees instead of contractors. Shares of Uber were up more than 12% and shares of Lyft were up more than 17% before markets opened on Wednesday. Voters were deciding on California’s Proposition 22, a ballot measure that Uber and Lyft were using as a last hope in the state to continue operating as they currently do.”
“A Covid Vaccine Is The Next Tourist Attraction” (Bloomberg). An opinion piece from GMU’s Prof. Tyler Cowen. “Covid-19 has brought so many new and difficult choices into people’s lives, and now there is another one, particularly for well-to-do Americans: If a vaccine were not yet available in the U.S., would you fly to another country to get it? It is now possible to have a decent sense of which nation is winning the vaccine race, and it is not the U.S. A Chinese vaccine is being distributed now, and so far it seems to be safe and modestly effective. The data are not sufficiently clear that you ought to get one now, but it is easy to imagine that in another month or two the Chinese vaccine will be a plausible option.”
