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What the stock market typically does after the U.S. election, according to history

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Traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange on Oct. 24, 2024.

Brendan McDermid | Reuters

Stocks typically rise after a presidential election — but investors need to be prepared for some short-term choppiness first, history shows.

The three major benchmarks on average have seen gains between Election Day and year-end in the presidential election year going back to 1980, according to CNBC data. However, investors shouldn’t be expecting a straight shot up in the market after polls close.

The S&P 500 after the election

Election Date Day After Week After Month Later Year End
11/3/2020 2.20% 5.23% 8.83% 11.48%
11/8/2016 1.11% 1.91% 4.98% 4.64%
11/6/2012 -2.37% -3.77% -1.01% -0.15%
11/4/2008 -5.27% -10.62% -15.96% -10.19%
11/2/2004 1.12% 2.97% 5.29% 7.20%
11/7/2000 -1.58% -3.42% -6.17% -7.79%
11/5/1996 1.46% 2.16% 4.23% 3.72%
11/3/1992 -0.67% -0.31% 2.38% 3.76%
11/8/1988 -0.66% -2.48% 0.52% 0.93%
11/6/1984 -0.73% -2.61% -4.49% -1.86%
11/4/1980 2.12% 1.72% 5.77% 5.21%
Average -0.30% -0.84% 0.40% 1.54%
Median -0.66% -0.31% 2.38% 3.72%

Source: CNBC

In fact, the three indexes have all averaged declines in the session and week following those voting days. Stocks have tended to erase most or all of those losses within a month, CNBC data shows.

This means investors shouldn’t be anticipating an immediate pop on Wednesday or the next few days after.

The Dow after the election

Election Date Day After Week After Month Later Year End
11/3/2020 1.34% 7.06% 9.06% 11.38%
11/8/2016 1.40% 3.22% 6.99% 7.80%
11/6/2012 -2.36% -3.70% -1.30% -1.07%
11/4/2008 -5.05% -9.68% -12.98% -8.82%
11/2/2004 1.01% 3.49% 5.47% 7.45%
11/7/2000 -0.41% -2.48% -3.06% -1.51%
11/5/1996 1.59% 3.04% 5.85% 6.04%
11/3/1992 -0.91% -0.83% 0.74% 1.50%
11/8/1988 -0.43% -2.37% 0.67% 1.93%
11/6/1984 -0.88% -3.02% -5.92% -2.62%
11/4/1980 1.70% 0.73% 3.55% 2.86%
Average -0.27% -0.41% 0.83% 2.27%
Median -0.41% -0.83% 0.74% 1.93%

Source: CNBC

That’s especially true given the chance that the presidential race, which is considered neck-and-neck, may not be called by Wednesday morning. America may also need to wait for close Congressional races to have final counts for determining which party has control of the either house.

The Nasdaq Composite after the election

Election Day Day After Week After Month Later Year End
11/3/2020 3.85% 3.52% 10.90% 15.48%
11/8/2016 1.11% 1.58% 4.31% 3.65%
11/6/2012 -2.48% -4.25% -0.75% 0.25%
11/4/2008 -5.53% -11.19% -18.79% -11.41%
11/2/2004 0.98% 2.95% 8.00% 9.61%
11/7/2000 -5.39% -8.12% -19.41% -27.67%
11/5/1996 1.34% 2.23% 5.78% 5.04%
11/3/1992 0.16% 3.83% 8.56% 11.97%
11/8/1988 -0.29% -1.77% -0.96% 0.67%
11/6/1984 -0.32% -1.08% -4.58% -1.27%
11/4/1980 1.49% 0.97% 6.75% 4.76%
Average -0.46% -1.03% -0.02% 1.01%
Median 0.16% 0.97% 4.31% 3.65%

Source: CNBC

The “election is now center stage as the next catalyst for financial markets,” said Amy Ho, executive director of strategic research at JPMorgan. “We caution that uncertainty could linger on the outcome as the timeline for certifying election results could take days for the presidential race and weeks for the House races.”

This election comes amid a strong year for stocks that’s pushed the broader market to all-time highs. With a gain of about 20%, 2024 has seen the best first 10 months of a presidential election year since 1936, according to Bespoke Investment Group.

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Treasury Secretary Bessent says market woes are more about tech stock sell-off than Trump’s tariffs

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Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent speaks to reporters outside the West Wing after doing a television interview on the North Lawn of the White House on March 13, 2025 in Washington, DC. 

Andrew Harnik | Getty Images

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Wednesday the sell-off in the stock market is due more to a sharp pullback in the biggest technology stocks instead of the protectionist policies coming from the Trump administration.

“I’m trying to be Secretary of Treasury, not a market commentator. What I would point out is that especially the Nasdaq peaked on DeepSeek day so that’s a Mag 7 problem, not a MAGA problem,” Bessent said on Bloomberg TV Wednesday evening.

Bessent was referring to Chinese AI startup DeepSeek, whose new language models sparked a rout in U.S. technology stocks in late January. The emergence of DeepSeek’s highly competitive and potentially much cheaper models stoked doubts about the billions that the big U.S. tech companies are spending on AI.

The so-called Magnificent 7 stocks — Apple, Amazon, Tesla, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta and Nvidia — started selling off drastically, pulling the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite into correction territory. The tech-heavy benchmark is down about 13% from its record high reached on December 16.

However, the secretary downplayed the impact from President Donald Trump’s steep tariffs, which caught many investors off guard and fueled fears of a re-acceleration in inflation, slower economic growth and even a recession. Many investors have blamed the tariff rollout for driving the S&P 500 briefly into correction territory from its record reached in late February. Wall Street defines a correction as a drop of 10% from a recent high.

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S&P 500, YTD

Trump signed an aggressive “reciprocal tariff” policy at the White House Wednesday evening, slapping duties of at least 10% and even higher for some countries. The actions sparked a huge sell-off in the stock market overnight, with the S&P 500 futures declining nearly 4% and the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average shedding 1,100 points. The losses will likely but the S&P 500 back into correction territory in Thursday’s session.

“It’s going to be fine if we put the best economic conditions in place,” Bessent said in a separate interview on Fox Wednesday evening. “If you go back and look, the stock market actually peaked on the [DeepSeek] Chinese AI announcement. So a lot of what we have seen has been just an idiosyncratic tech sell-off.”

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Conservative cable channel Newsmax shares plunge more than 70% after a dizzying 2-day surge

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A Newsmax booth broadcasts as attendees try out the guns on display at the National Rifle Association (NRA) annual convention in Houston, Texas, U.S. May 29, 2022. 

Callaghan O’hare | Reuters

Shares of conservative news channel Newsmax plunged more than 70% on Wednesday as its meteoric rise as a new public company proved to be short-lived.

The stock tumbled a whopping 72% in afternoon trading, following a 2,230% surge in Newsmax’s first two days of trading after debuting on the New York Stock Exchange. At one point, the rally gave the company a market capitalization of nearly $30 billion — surpassing the market cap of legacy media companies like Warner Bros. Discovery and Fox Corp.

Newsmax was listed on the NYSE via a so-called Regulation A offering, instead of a traditional IPO. Such an offering allows small companies to raise capital without undergoing the full SEC registration process. The primary focus is to sell to retail investors, in this case It was sold to approximately 30,000 retail investors. 

The public offering indeed garnered the attention from retail traders, some of whom touted the stock as the “New GME” in online chatrooms. GME refers to the meme stock GameStop, which made Wall Street history in 2021 by its speculative trading boom.

Newsmax has a small “float,” or shares available for trading. Less than 6% of Newsmax shares, or 7.5 million shares out of a total of 128 million fully diluted shares, are available for public trading.

The conservative TV news outlet has seen its ratings rise with the election of President Donald Trump and other prominent Republicans — although it still falls behind the dominant Fox News. Overall, Newsmax ranks in the top 20 among cable network average viewership in both prime time and daytime, Nielsen said.

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Stocks making the biggest moves midday: TSLA, DJT, AMZN, RIVN

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