The topsy-turvy US presidential election has Wall Street racing to adjust its bets as Democratic party candidate Vice President Kamala Harris keeps surging in the polls against the once presumptive favorite, Republican former President Donald Trump.
“More volatility seems like the most predictable outcome in the short term,” said Brian Mulberry, client portfolio manager at Zacks Investment Management. “That could create pricing anomalies and opportunities to re-balance risks for active managers.”
Harris’s prospects have taken off since President Joe Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed her on July 21. After last week’s Democratic National Convention, polling from Real Clear Politics shows Harris at 48.4% and Trump at 46.9% nationally. When Biden dropped out the figures stood at 46.2% for Harris and 48.1% for Trump.
That shift in polling is showing up in the market. Indexes from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. that track trading strategies for each party show the Democratic one started outperforming the Republican one right around the time Biden stepped down as candidate. And options positioning shows traders are paying more for protection against volatility around Election Day, even though overall volatility is expected to remain below the long-term average.
Institutionally, Wall Street also is adjusting its view of the vote. Just last week, UBS Group AG’s wealth management arm said a Harris win with a split Congress is the likeliest outcome. Goldman Sachs rejigged the components of its election-related trading strategies to reflect lower odds for a Republican sweep, although it still sees that as the most likely outcome. And earlier this month, JPMorgan Chase & Co. declared the presidential election a toss-up after earlier saying a Trump victory was likelier.
Where you can see the “Trump trade” falling apart isn’t in the broad indexes. It’s at the individual industry and stock level.
Take private-prison operators, for example. GEO Group Inc. shares were trading at around $13.50 before Biden’s disastrous debate with Trump on June 27, then shot up to $18 by mid-July and are now back to around $13.50. CoreCivic Inc.’s stock price was around $12 before the debate, jumped above $15 in the middle of last month, but has since slid back to roughly $13.50.
The same is true for gunmakers. Shares of Sturm Ruger & Co. and Smith & Wesson Brands Inc. both jumped after the Trump-Biden debate and climbed through July, only to fade back to roughly where they were.
“Presidents do not impact overall markets, but they do impact sectors,” said Matthew Tuttle, chief investment officer and founder at Tuttle Tactical Management.
Meanwhile, shares of Trump Media & Technology Group Corp., the former president’s social-media company, are trading around $22 after climbing above $40 in mid-July.
The effect of the trade is tougher to isolate in assets like government bonds and global currencies, which are sensitive to broader economic, financial and geopolitical news. Traders have now mostly dismissed concerns of trade wars and higher tariffs, risks most closely associated with a Trump win. The dollar is selling off from a high in June, and while part of that may be because Trump is seen as a strong dollar candidate, it also appears to be about the Fed cutting interest rates.
“The rising prospect of a Democratic victory in the presidential race caused an unwind of ‘Trump trades,’ among which was the stronger dollar view,” said Thierry Wizman, director of global currencies and an interest-rate strategist at Macquarie Futures.
Trump has also discussed promoting cryptocurrencies and said he wants Bitcoin to be made in the US, rather than China. But the value of Bitcoin doesn’t appear to be moving in correlation to Trump’s election chances anymore, after some initial knee-jerk reactions.
A win by Harris, on the other hand, is expected to be good for a vast swath of industries, including renewable energy companies and manufacturers with exposure to them, electric-vehicle makers, and even utilities.
The bigger Harris trade, however, is the risk of Trump igniting a trade war with China through tariffs and his more extreme rhetoric about trade. So any industry that’s heavily dependent on the Asian economy could see a relief rally if Democrats retain the White House. Overall, a victory by the vice president will also imply the least policy disruption, an outcome that investors usually like.
And then there are the stocks that will do well simply because there’s an election: advertisers. Piper Sandler analyst Matt Farrell noted that the bank’s most recent checks pointed to this year’s political advertising spend coming in larger than expected due to the suddenly hotly contested race. The analyst sees online advertising company Trade Desk Inc. as a “clear beneficiary.”
The bottom line for anyone looking to trade the US presidential election is it’s still early and voters’ moods can be fickle as summer gives way to fall. So investors and strategists advise investors to wait rather than lock into a position at this point in the election cycle. And despite Harris’ rapid rise in the polls, the race is considered too close to call, with most market watchers bracing for a photo finish.
“We are not trading the election, it is just too tight,” said Eric Diton, president and managing director of the Wealth Alliance. “When Biden was running, the Trump trade made a lot of sense because Biden really dropped in the polls. But now Harris is gaining momentum, and it’s again anyone’s guess.”
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