A three-day winning streak for US indices appears vulnerable this morning with US index futures contracts trading down 0.4% to 0.5% in the wake of yesterday’s US midterm elections. At the time of writing, the Republicans appear poised to take control of the House of Representatives, but the Senate remains up for grabs. Overseas markets are also sliding this morning with the Dax down 0.6% and the FTSE down 0.3%..
Cryptocurrencies are under pressure for a second straight day with Bitcoin down another 3.9% and Ethereum down another 7.4%. Solvency issues at cryptocurrency exchange FTX sparked a stampede of capital out of cryptocurrencies yesterday, some of which found its way into gold as an alternative currency haven. Gold rallied over 2.0% yesterday, but is down 0.4% in early trading today.
In earnings news today Walt Disney is down 7.6% after missing expectations on EPS ($0.30 vs street $0.55) and sales ($20.1B vs street $21.2B) and warned that streaming growth could taper off moving forward. Meanwhile, the parade of layoffs in the technology/communications space continued overnight with Meta Platforms announcing that it is letting over 11,000 employees go.
Today is a quiet for economic news leaving investors to spend the day digesting election results. Tomorrow, the focus turns back to inflation and its impact on the economy and monetary policy with the US Consumer Price Index due (street 8.0% vs previous 8.2).