September 25, 2020
The markets have gone fairly range bound for the past two weeks heading into this event, so Tuesday will set the tone.
If the biggest overhang for markets and the economy, right now, is the government policy on the virus, then we have two distinctly different strategies to evaluate.
Trump will clearly push to get the economy operating at full capacity, with the political obstacle of an election removed. That would be good for a continued economic recovery, and good for stocks. And we would be on path to see the inflationary impact of a policy response that has been far bigger than the economic damage (i.e. trillions of excess dollars floating around).
Biden, if we listen to the broader party line on the virus, would likely ramp up government guidelines on virus mitigation, which would include more restrictions on business capacity – more economic damage. The strategy would be focused around the vaccine timeline. Adding more economic damage increases the risk of a deflationary bust. To counter that risk, he would need an aligned Congress to get a monster stimulus package passed. That scenario requires a lot of pieces to fall into place.