Welcome to the most important week of trading in 2024! If you think this is an overstatement, I challenge you to find a better one. The General Election is on Tuesday, and whether we see the results of who will occupy the White House by Wednesday morning or not, we will have chosen a route at the fork in the road.

Pre-market futures are flat currently: the Dow is -17 points while the S&P 500 is +6 and the Nasdaq +3 points. Bond yields are now a lukewarm +4.28% on the 10-year and +4.135% on the 2-year. When returns begin coming in Tuesday evening, we may then start to see the stock market wrangle a new direction.

Election Tuesday; Election Results…?

Whether Donald Trump returns to office as only the second non-consecutive two-term President (Grover Cleveland, 1884 and 1892) or Vice President Kamala Harris steps to the fore as the 47th president, based on how close polling data remains, we may not know the answer until sometime after Wednesday morning. Recall that in 2020, Joe Biden wasn’t officially declared the winner until Saturday morning of Election Week.

There are far too many variables currently to fashion a market response, and we should be OK with this, near-term. The S&P in 2024 so far is up +20% — not too shabby for an economy that was supposed to be mired in a deep recession at this time.

Fed Rate Decision Thursday

The last time the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) got together, back in mid-September, it cut interest rates for the first time since March 2020, when they were pulled to 0-0.25% ahead of the Covid pandemic. Coming down 50 (basis points) bps instead of the widely expected 25 bps, the Fed funds rate was brought down to 4.75-5.00%. Thursday’s move lower will be the first time we’ve had sub-5% interested rates since February 2023.

We’ve had a month and a half’s worth of economic data between that last cut and Thursday’s pending decision, and based on a mere 12K new jobs filled in October alone, it looks like a 25 bps trim is baked into the cake. The market’s already there, although not in a mood to bid higher until after these heavy shoes drop.

Q3 Earnings Season Heats Up, Post-Marquee Names Reporting

Far too many companies are reporting to properly shake a stick at, so here’s a few choice results which caught our eye this morning:

Marriott (MAR) posted slight misses on both top and bottom lines this morning, with Q3 earnings of $2.26 per share missing the Zacks consensus by 5 cents. Revenues of $6.26 billion were -0.45% below analysts’ expectations. Shares are down -2% on the news.