Stock market live: Election night updates and impacts

A lot of folks on the Street I have chatted up this week are bracing for a big move in markets Wednesday morning, as the belief is that the winner of the election will be known later on tonight. Moreover, either winner would be seen as a surprise for markets (weird how these things are viewed by investors). Take that with a grain of salt, as such groupthink could mean we don’t get a big move in markets on Wednesday.

Amid the action, I would keep a close eye on bond yields, as markets could very well take their direction from them, based on my conversations. It’s a point the Goldman Sachs team made today in a note making the rounds this evening:

“The upcoming US elections could drive further upward pressure on global bond yields and indigestion for equities,” said Goldman Sachs strategist Andrea Ferrario.

Ferrario added, “Rising bond yields might eventually become a speed limit for equities if real yields start to increase (vs. real GDP growth expectations) or if increases in bond yields are too rapid.”

Futures moved firmly into green figures on Tuesday evening as early results from the US presidential election rolled in while cryptocurrencies surged and the US dollar also gained.

Near 8 p.m. ET, contracts on the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 (NQ=F) rose 0.3%, while S&P 500 futures (ES=F) moved roughly 0.5% higher. Dow Jones Industrial Average futures (YM=F) were up about 0.7%.

The price of bitcoin (BTC-USD) was also up as much as 4.5% to trade north of $71,000. The dollar was also stronger against most major currency pairs, including the yen and euro.

So far, Trump has won Kentucky, West Virginia, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Florida, Tennessee, and Indiana, while Harris has claimed Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maryland, and Massachusetts, according to the Associated Press.

Trump Media & Technology Group stock (DJT) surged more than 20% in after-hours trading on Tuesday as early votes showed Trump clinch Kentucky and Indiana.

The stock had a wild session during market hours after trading was halted several times due to volatility. Shares somewhat recovered from steeper losses but still closed down a little over 1%.

Shortly after the market close, DJT reported third quarter results that revealed a net loss of $19.25 million for the quarter ending Sept. 30. The company also reported revenue of $1.01 million, a slight year-over-year drop compared to the $1.07 million it reported in the third quarter of 2023.

Read more here.

via Colin Campbell of Yahoo News:

Democrats hold a 51-49 edge in the Senate. To hold onto the majority in the chamber, Democrats will need 51 seats if Donald Trump wins or 50 seats if Kamala Harris is the victor. This will be a difficult path for Democrats because the key Senate races are largely fought on Republican-friendly territory, and the national party has already conceded the West Virginia seat held by outgoing Sen. Joe Manchin.

Here are the races most observers are following:

Arizona: Rep. Ruben Gallego (D) vs. former TV anchor Kari Lake (R)
Florida: Sen. Rick Scott (R) vs. former Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (D)
Maryland: Former Gov. Larry Hogan (R) vs. Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks (D)
Michigan: Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D) vs. former Rep. Mike Rogers (R)
Missouri: Sen. Josh Hawley (R) vs. Marine veteran Lucas Kunce (D)
Montana: Sen. Jon Tester (D) vs. Navy SEAL veteran Tim Sheehy (R)
Nebraska: Sen. Deb Fischer (R) vs. union leader Dan Osborn (I)
Nevada: Sen. Jacky Rosen (D) vs. Army veteran Sam Brown (R)
Ohio: Sen. Sherrod Brown (D) vs. businessman Bernie Moreno (R)
Pennsylvania: Sen. Bob Casey (D) vs. businessman Dave McCormick (R)
Texas: Sen. Ted Cruz (R) vs. Rep. Colin Allred (D)
Wisconsin: Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D) vs. businessman Eric Hovde (R)

Check out the Yahoo News liveblog >

Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk confirmed Tuesday evening that he’ll be spending election night with Donald Trump as the results come in.

“I’m headed to Florida,” he said on a livestream on X, formerly Twitter, early Tuesday evening. “I’ll just be there with President Trump and JD [Vance] and a bunch of other cool people,” he added. The comment confirmed an earlier New York Times report that Musk would he headed to Florida this evening.

It’s the latest example of Musk’s extraordinarily close links with Trump in the final stages of the campaign after the world’s richest man spent over $130 million with the aim of returning former President Trump to office.

At a recent closely watched Madison Square Garden rally in New York City, Musk was the final speaker before Trump’s wife, Melania, took the stage.

Other prominent figures in Trump’s orbit are set to be elsewhere Tuesday night, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, who will spend at least the early part of the evening in his home state of Louisiana.

Musk also added Tuesday evening that he’d just voted himself in south Texas, where his company SpaceX has a facility.

The next crop of states have officially closed their respective voting polls: Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, and Virginia, among a slew of others.

The remaining states will close in the next few hours. All polling locations are set to close by 11 p.m. ET.

I’m not an election forecaster, but I’ll make a 2024 election call based on polls and my own intuition. Since I’m publishing this for everybody to see, my fans can extol me — or my trolls can berate me — whether I’m right or wrong.

Yes, I could be wrong, and if so I’ll admit it tomorrow (or whenever we know).

While you wait for results, take a break from reloading those ever-changing betting markets and take a look at the stakes.

Yahoo Finance spent the final days of the 2024 campaign examining four key economic decisions that, like it or not, will confront the next president in his or her first two years in office. Here’s more about those issues that will be center stage next year, no matter who wins.

For an even deeper look at all of the financial issues that matter most to your pocketbook, please see Yahoo Finance’s interactive guide to the 2024 election.

Exit polls released by NBC News, Fox News, CNN, and other TV networks on Tuesday afternoon indicate some of the top issues for voters.

via Bloomberg: “Around 35% of voters — including a plurality of both men and women — said democracy was their top issue and 31% said the economy, while 14% picked abortion. Immigration was the top issue for 11% of voters. Abortion was the top issue for 19% of women versus just 8% of men. Only 4% of voters said foreign policy was their biggest concern.”

Our job at Yahoo Finance tonight is to track market implications of election developments, not to parse election returns at the county level and draw maps and circles all over wall-sized maps of Pennsylvania and Georgia. But I set up a feed on X, formerly Twitter, with a few experts on election returns, for anybody who wants to go deep into the districts tonight. Anybody can follow that feed for sharp analysis of what early returns are telling us. Just click the link above and follow my list, which I’ve cleverly labeled “Election night.”

I noticed political analyst Louis Jacobson curated an election night list as well. Click that link to follow it. Lou does terrific work as a contributor to PolitiFact and many other outlets. Definitely a good guy to follow, in his own right.

If there’s anything you’d like us to address in this blog tonight, tag us: @YahooFinance, @rickjnewman, @benwerschkul, and @allie_canal. We offer personalized service, when possible!

US stock futures held steady as the first states closed their polls in the wrap-up to Election Day.

Near 6 p.m. ET, contracts on the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 (NQ=F) climbed about 0.1% while S&P 500 futures (ES=F) also moved roughly 0.1% higher. Dow Jones Industrial Average futures (YM=F) were up about 0.2% on the heels of a winning day for stocks.