Wall Street Fears an Election With No Clear Winner
Investors are more concerned about the time it will take to declare a winner come November than they are about a Trump or a Biden win.
Wall Street hates uncertainty.
Photographer: Bloomberg
There is a high probability that the U.S. elections this November are going to be a mess. There are a range of scenarios for market participants to consider that were once unthinkable. What happens if President Donald Trump loses and doesn’t concede? Or if challenger Joe Biden loses and doesn’t concede? Or if Trump again wins via the electoral college but not the popular vote, setting off civil unrest the likes of which the country has never seen?
Those aren’t the only scenarios. My personal favorite involves the counting of mail-in ballots, which are likely to set a record by far. Democrats generally lean toward mostly voting by mail amidst the pandemic, while Republicans tend to favor voting in person at polling stations. It is probable that Trump has a commanding lead on election night, which dwindles over the following weeks as the mail-in ballots are counted. Imagine what the political environment would be like under that scenario.