Last Twist of the Knife.

High volumes and increased volatility.

“If I could only open one thing each morning it would be John Ellis’s News Items newsletter.” — Larry Summers, President Emeritus of Harvard University and former Secretary of the Treasury of the United States.

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1. Counting the votes will extend beyond election night on Tuesday, and determining the outcome of the presidential race could, too. Even in states that count their ballots relatively quickly, if the race is as close as the polls say, it could take days before a winner can be projected (election results are never official until final certification). In 2020, a record number of people voted by mail because of the pandemic, and many states were processing large numbers of mail ballots for the first time. While mail voting has dropped off in many states and others have made changes to speed up counting, these types of ballots are still more time consuming to count. Democrats have been more likely to cast mail ballots, and variations in timing for counting them can contribute to so-called “mirages” in the reported results — cases in which the type of ballots reported first favor one party in a way that is unrepresentative of the eventual result. (Source: nytimes.com)

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2. How long will it take to count the vote in the seven ”battleground states”?

(Source: nytimes.com)

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3. Bankers, traders and investors are bracing themselves for a long stint of high volumes and increased volatility, particularly in bond and currency markets, ahead of Tuesday’s US presidential election. With markets already pricing in potentially large swings across several asset classes, Wall Street banks have been preparing well in advance — with some pausing software updates and booking downtown hotel rooms for suburb-dwelling traders, to make sure they are ready to handle any unexpected moves on election night or throughout the rest of the week. “I will be glued to my screen,” said Vikram Prasad, Citi’s global head of credit trading. “We’re really co-ordinating across the entire organization.” (Source: ft.com)

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