The Donald Trump Stock Metric

It's the day after the election, and the tricky task at hand on Wall Street is trying to predict what happens next after almost everyone failed to predict what just happened. But don't expect that to stop everyone from trying.

It's hard to determine how volatile markets will be in the near term, and the longer term is even more difficult. As a Donald Trump victory came into focus overnight, S&P 500 futures went a jaw-dropping "limit down" with a 5 percent plunge that briefly halted trading. They went on to recover most of that plunge before the open, and the first two hours of trading looked like another day in the office, with benchmark indexes flat to down slightly.

Trading is now much more about gut instincts than fundamental analysis. The status quo is not just gone -- it's been set on fire and its ashes have been scattered to the wind faster than the attendees at all those blue-state election night parties. What will replace the status quo is a riddle wrapped in an enigma wrapped in an ill-fitting suit and a suspicious comb-over. Complicating matters are the mass buying and selling of index products, which could cause a tightening in correlations that may obscure trends for the near future.

Still, in the spirit of the president-elect, who has a fascination with "winners" and "losers," some obvious beneficiaries of a Trump White House were rising strongly even before the market opened. Drugmakers like Mylan NV and Abbvie Inc. surged on relief that Hillary Clinton won't be interfering with pharmaceutical prices; miners like Newmont Mining Corp. and Freeport-McMoran Inc. rallied as investors rushed to the safe haven of gold; military contractors Raytheon Co. and Lockheed Martin are up for obvious reasons. The same goes for gunmakers Sturm Ruger and Smith & Wesson, which might not need to change its name now.