What? It’s Over Already?

The Rickards Election Scorecard

We begin the day with a little myth-busting: Based on the best research we can muster, Rob Reiner did not threaten to set himself on fire if Donald Trump won the election. Nor did Bono threaten to drive himself off a cliff.

But the unfounded rumors of those threats have prompted great mirth in the meme-o-sphere this morning…

In other news, the pollsters and the pundit class beclowned themselves in 2024 at least as badly as they did in 2016.

And so we did not end up with the days-long drama we’d been promised. (Threatened?)

Our own Jim Rickards got it right when he told his readers we’d know the outcome of the presidential race “late on Election Day or early Wednesday morning.”

The networks called it for Trump around 5:30 a.m. EST after he’d sewn up the swing states of North Carolina, Georgia, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

But the trajectory was evident well before midnight.

Trump expanded on his 2020 margin in Ohio. Kamala Harris’ margin in Virginia shrank relative to Joe Biden’s in 2020. Hell, Trump won Miami-Dade County — the first time a Republican pulled that off since the elder George Bush in 1988.

At this rate, Trump is on track to win the nationwide popular vote — which he did not in 2016.

In the interest of accountability, let’s run down Jim Rickards’ predictions one by one as issued yesterday morning to readers of Rickards’ Strategic Intelligence…

• “Donald J. Trump will win election as president by an electoral vote count of 312-226 in our conservative estimate, and perhaps do as well as 329-209 in a slightly more aggressive estimate where Trump wins Michigan, Virginia and New Hampshire.”

As we write, Trump has 292 electoral votes, comfortably over the 270 threshold. A short time ago, swing state Michigan was called for Trump.

Still outstanding are two more swing states — Arizona and Nevada — plus Alaska. If he sweeps all three, that puts him exactly at Jim’s conservative estimate of 312. As noted above, Virginia went to Harris – and so did New Hampshire.

• “My Senate forecast is that Republicans will retake the Senate with a solid 54-46 majority, up from their current minority status of only 49 Senate seats.”

At last check, Republicans have secured 52 Senate seats — with five seats yet to be decided. Jim’s forecast is within reach for the GOP. (More about the state of play in the Senate, given its importance to the crypto lobby, momentarily…)

• “My House forecast with 435 seats up for grabs is more speculative (due to scarce polling data), but my best estimate is that the Republicans will hold the House and increase their lead slightly to 225-210, up from the current margin of 220-212 (with 3 vacancies). That will give the Republicans a solid working majority.”

Here, it’s simply too soon to tell. The Republicans have won 198 seats, the Democrats 180. That leaves 57 seats to be determined — a number on par with the day after the 2022 midterm elections, by the way.

Not a bad series of calls — and way better than you got from the likes of the vastly overrated Nate Silver (who I thoroughly torched on Election Day 2016, when Jim also forecast a Trump win).

What does it mean for the investment landscape going forward?

Earlier today at 11:00 a.m. EDT, Jim Rickards hopped on a video call with our executive publisher Matt Insley. If you’re not yet familiar with Jim’s work, there’s no better time to get acquainted than today. There’s no sales pitch — just down-to-earth information about how to approach your investments in the weeks and months ahead.

Click here to start watching Jim Rickards’ exclusive post-election briefing right away.

The View from Davos… and BlackRock

Of course, it’s not just celebrities who are losing it at the prospect of a second Trump term…

But not everyone in the Davos set is at a loss.

As we mentioned during the most recent World Economic Forum gathering in Davos last January, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon was already at peace with a second Trump term.

Here’s a real eye-opener, though: The head of the world’s biggest asset manager is also at peace.

“I’m tired of hearing this is the biggest election in your lifetime. The reality is over time it doesn’t matter”, said BlackRock CEO Larry Fink at a conference on Oct. 21.

Yeah, that Larry Fink. The guy who might have become Treasury secretary in a Hillary Clinton administration. The guy who brought the term “ESG” into common usage (until he backed away from it last year).

“It really doesn’t matter”, he reiterated. At BlackRock, “we work with both administrations and are having conversations with both candidates.”

The financial sector as a whole is rallying big this morning. The KBW Bank Index is up nearly 10% at last check.

Nor is that the only early winner in view. Read on…

Early Winners and Losers in the “Trump Trade”

It’s safe to say Mr. Market is pleased with a decisive and early Trump win.

All the major U.S. stock indexes are back in record territory…

• As we write, the S&P 500 is up 2.3% and over 5,900 for the first time
• The Nasdaq is up stronger, 2.7% and within reach of 19,000
• The Dow is up strongest — 3.4% or more than 1,400 points — well over 43,500

But small-cap stocks — those with a market value under $2 billion — are performing best of all. The Russell 2000 is up 5.3%. At 2,381 the index is within reach of its November 2021 record.

Specific winners and losers, you ask?

Trump Media (DJT) popped huge on the open but has since retreated to a 3.4% gain. Elon Musk’s Tesla Inc. (TSLA) is faring much better, up nearly 15% to its highest levels in over two years.

But TSLA is about the only thing “green” that’s prospering today. The sector as a whole is getting slammed; BlackRock’s iShares Global Clean Energy ETF (ICLN) is down over 7% at last check.

Bonds are selling off hard, pushing yields sharply higher. The yield on a 10-year Treasury note is back over 4.4%, a four-month high.

A precious metals sell-off was probably coming sooner or later — and it came today.

Early election returns notwithstanding, gold held its own past midnight on the East Coast. Then it dipped briefly… tried to recover… and then it was down, down, down.

At last check, the Midas metal is down $76 or 2.8% at $2,667. It’s the first time gold has traded below $2,700 in nearly three weeks.

Silver is, as it is wont to do, taking it worse — down 4.3% to $31.22. The HUI index of gold stocks is down 2.4% to 310, testing a four-week low.

(What was it we said about it being a bad sign silver couldn’t reach $35 and the HUI couldn’t hold 350?)

Blame much of the precious metals swoon on dollar strength; the U.S. Dollar Index (DXY) is up 1.6% to nearly 105, the highest since early July.

Elsewhere in the commodity complex, crude is flat at $72.

The Crypto Election

Bitcoin made a push to record heights amid the early inklings of a Trump win — and it’s still in record territory as we write at $74,641. And shares of Coinbase (COIN) are up 28%.

As our crypto evangelist James Altucher reminded us in yesterday’s edition, Trump promised to make America “the crypto capital of the planet.”

But that’s not all. Crypto’s emergence as a force in politics is perhaps even more evident in what might be the second-biggest shocker of this election — the victory of GOP Senate candidate Bernie Moreno in Ohio.

Moreno knocked off three-term incumbent Sherrod Brown, chair of the Senate Banking Committee and vocal crypto critic. Moreno overcame a polling deficit of six percentage points to win by nearly four.

As we documented last month, crypto PACs plowed $40.1 million toward Moreno’s campaign.

But as we also chronicled, those PACs are happy to play both sides of the aisle. So they funneled money toward Democratic Senate candidates in Michigan and Arizona. Neither of those races have been decided yet — and the Michigan race is neck-and-neck with over 98% of the votes counted.

Still, Ohio is victory enough for the industry. “Crypto’s big bet pays off,” says the subject line of an email blasting out the Buckeye State’s results.

“The next Congress will be the most pro-crypto ever,” says a tracker issued by the trade group Stand With Crypto.

By its count, 253 pro-crypto candidates have been elected to the House, compared with 115 anti-crypto. And in the Senate, the group counts 16 pro-crypto candidates who’ve been elected, and 12 anti-crypto.

Mailbag: “Nobody for President”

“Yes, nobody is still a thing!” writes one of our longtimers after yesterday’s edition.

“Here in the State Commie Regime of New York (at least the county I live in), ‘None of These Candidates’ is not an option.

“But ‘Write-In’ is.

“So that’s the bubble I fill wherever I see one choice listed for all political parties — and then I write ‘NOBODY.’

“Rebellious, no?

“I figure any candidate who’s slimy enough to be affiliated with every party might steal my vote if I leave the column blank.

“It’s a nuanced form of anarchy. This is what happens as you get old.”

Dave responds: As we write, 84% of the vote has been counted in Nevada and “None of These Candidates” has garnered 1.2% of the total — over 15,000 votes.

That’s good enough for third place. It’s also more than double the combined vote for the two third-party candidates — Libertarian Chase Oliver and Independent American Joel Skousen.

➢ If the latter name sounds familiar, that’s the brother of financial newsletter legend Mark Skousen.

Finally, a correction of sorts to yesterday’s edition.

When I enumerated the 10 states where the Army National Guard had been called out for election “support operations”... I claimed to have listed them in alphabetical order.

“Just wondering who alphabetized the list,” a reader writes.

I confess I pasted that list into my document and noticed only that the first one began with an “A” and the last ended with a “W.”

My bad… my thanks to the sharp-eyed reader… and I suppose we can all express gratitude that the Guardsmen aren’t needed…