He held his first press conference on the economy today around 3pm EST. You can watch the video through the article here, or just read an abbreviated version of it.
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Lately it seems I sure am asking a lot of questions. I just read somewhere that historically, stocks do rise by a marginal amount (2%) the day after US presidential elections. People might be glad just to have the thing over and done with, regardless of the outcome. There’s also a broad consensus that Obama might be better for stabilizing the economy - he has a more consistent plan, etc. etc.
Obviously, the market fundamentals are not going to change in a day or two - but the election of Barack Obama will certainly have positive repercussions worldwide on foreign markets (since generally speaking, it appears that most other countries would vote for Obama if they were given a choice), which could indirectly help US markets as well.
What do you think? I guess we’ll know in the next 48 hours.
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(1) U.S. Treasury sells $40 Billion worth of debt to the Fed.
(2) Wachovia might be buying Morgan Stanley (that leaves only JP Morgan left standing of the 5 Big investment banks, though its shares also plummeted today).
(3) Washington Mutual (the biggest savings and loan bank in the US) puts itself up for auction.
In other news, this also happened:
(1) Russia halted all trading today as markets everywhere plunged
(2) Gold jumped up $70/oz. overnight, the biggest single day jump in well over 50 years
(3) Oil and commodities are finally back up again, returning us to a familiar picture
(4) USD is down slightly from the Canadian dollar
(5) AIG (the world’s largest insurance company!) bailout did almost nothing to ease market panic
(6) Yields on one-month US Treasuries actually dipped below zero (this means people are fleeing to safe investment havens)
(7) The very first US money market fund - Reserve Primary - freezes all redemptions because of exposure to Lehman (you thought your money market fund was liquid? Think again….)
(1) You can buy physical gold
(2) You can stay in treasuries and government bonds (causing the yields on them to drop, though…)
(3) You can feel safe with consumer stocks such as Proctor & Gamble and Colgate, or Shoppers Drug Mart in Canada.
Myself, though I am looking at Shoppers Drug Mart and JNJ, I will probably move on the fire sale and grab up some TD Bank stock or some Husky Energy (a company with no debt on its balance sheets). I’m also looking at another of the oil income funds, now that they’re incredibly cheap. I guess I’m not as afraid as the news media seems to be. But I certainly won’t be anywhere near US financials.
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