1. Stocks gain on expected Biden loss

Stocks rose Tuesday as investors awaited the results in the U.S. where a Democrat loss could affect future levels of government spending and regulation.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 333 points (or 1.02%). The S&P 500 rose 0.56%. The Nasdaq Composite was 0.49% higher. All three indexes were on pace for their third straight up day. 

CNBC says “market participants are expecting Republicans to take back the House of Representatives and possibly win the Senate as well when results start rolling in Tuesday night. Investors tend to like the notion of gridlock in Washington with a divided Congress and President because it will limit government spending, new taxes and regulations.”

2. Bitcoin punters have to be feeling it

Bitcoin dropped 9% in early afternoon trading, with the FTX token cut in half, amid a broad crypto sell-off in early afternoon trading. Bitcoin fell more than $US1,900 to $US18,889. Those moves follow an agreement between the two biggest crypto exchanges in the world, Binance and FTX, to solve a “liquidity crunch.” Bitcoin was a $US47,000 price at the start of the year and $US66,000 a year ago!

3. Magellan’s navigator is on the way out

The AFR’s Chanticleer tell us that “two years ago, a share selldown at Magellan Financial Group by the company’s co-founder and former talisman, Hamish Douglass, would have sent the stock into a tailspin.” However, yesterday Douglas sold 13 million shares and “the stock actually rose 2.5 per cent in early trade on Tuesday before sliding into the red. It finished the session 0.4 per cent higher at $9.67.” This might have been helped by his promise to the market that he would not sell anymore for 12 months but either way, this company really looks like its chief navigator through the tricky waters of stock market investing, has really lost his way.

4. Confidence hits recession levels

The AFR says 40% of people surveyed by Westpac say they plan Christmas cutbacks. To be precise, thefinancial newspaper revealed that “consumer sentiment plunged to recession levels and inflation expectations soared after the Reserve Bank last week lifted the official interest rate for a seventh straight month and indicated more increases were on the way.” The Westpac survey has not seen such a planned consumer pullback in Christmas spending since 2009, which was just after the stock market lost 50% in the GFC!

5. Putin not to blame for energy crisis!

The Australian reports that “Australia’s policy failure and climate wars are to blame for a national energy crisis rather than Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.” These are the views of Santos chief executive Kevin Gallagher and he added that households were worried about resource nationalism and price inflation. “There are conversations of fear that I never expected to see in my lifetime and in Australia they are the consequence of more than a decade of energy policy failure that quite frankly I’ve been warning about for many years,” he told an investor day on Tuesday.

He went on to explain why energy prices are so high: “They’re also the consequence of domestic climate wars much more than they are a consequence of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine … Climate wars have left us without a carbon price or the right market signals for energy and decarbonization investments. The high oil and gas prices that we’re seeing today were emerging before the war.”