All Eyes On US Presidential Election

Early this morning, all eyes seem to be focused on the US presidential election, which wraps up today. The $USD is down and the price of precious metals and oil are up a bit. Europe is rallying on hopes of BoE and ECB rate cuts on Thursday, and the DJIA futures are well up (+224) before the open.

But yesterday, there was no volume at all, and prices were flat-lined, across the board for US equities, gold and the goldminers.

The DJIA (-5.18 -0.06% to 9319.83), S&P 500 (-2.45 -0.25% to 966.30), and NASDAQ Composite (+5.38 +0.31% to 1726.33) were as close to motionless as possible. The Toronto Composite lost -0.43% to 9721.26, while the Venture Board gained +2.22% to 935.59.

Internationally this morning, Japan’s Nikkei 225, which had been closed on Monday, gained +6.27% to 9114.6 and India’s Sensex BSE 30 was up +2.84% to 10631.4; but the others: Australia (-0.08% to 4169.8); Shanghai (-0.76% to 1706.7); and Hong Kong (+0.28% to 14384.3), were quiet.

In New York yesterday, there were five sectors barely up, with Staples (XLP +1.5%) up and Energy (XLE -3.1%) and Consumer Discretionary (XLY -2.9%) down.

The Airlines ($XAL +5.7%) and Natural Gas stocks ($XNG -4.0%) were a couple that traded apart from the rest.

On the weekend report, for the Cara 100, I noted that Teck Corp (TCK) was ready to move higher and the gain of +11.5% on the day did not surprise. The only other big winners were MFC (+10.0%) and GOL (+8.3%). The losers were TTM (-16.9%), NUE (-6.6%) and WFMI (-6.5%). The loss at Tata Motors followed October sales reports by Ford (F), GM (GM) and Toyota (TM) that were exceedingly disappointing and resulted in a senior GM officer stating in a Bloomberg interview that this is the worst period he has seen in his long career, and that the vehicle manufacturing industry cannot sustain such losses for long.

The $USD gained +0.67% to 86.25 and the Euro dropped to US$1.2603. This morning the $USD is down to 86.00.

The long bond ($USB) gained +0.37% to 113.55 as bond yields dropped across the board. The T-Bill yield dropped to 0.420%.

$GOLD gained +$8.60/oz to 726.80, which was merely a catch-up from Friday’s afternoon futures market close to the interim move higher in spot (cash market) prices.

This morning, at 8am ET, the spot prices of gold, palladium, platinum and silver were up a bit (except for silver) to 743.10, 210, 837, and 10.12. Actually quite a bit.

The $USD was down a bit.

Crude Oil was sitting at 64.69, and quiet.

DJIA futures at 9514 (+182) at 8:16am ET have come off the highs, down over 40 points in about 30 minutes.

Google (GOOG) and Yahoo (YHOO) might have something going today.

Comments & Outlook

Today is going to be a celebration for either Republicans or Democrats.

I will predict one thing: Gov. Palin will be returning to her home, the one from where she can see Russia. Yesterday, however, she put on a highly impressive number of rally speeches. Where was this woman earlier? Wow!

In any case, she’s going home, where her husband can go back to his dog sled team or whatever it is he does. At the least, she made this political race an interesting one.

As to the market, the Stock Trader’s Almanac says that a Republic victory today would be bad for the market. That’s academic anyway. The Dems will sweep.

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