FORTUNE: The stock market points to a win for Kamala Harris—unless it’s 1968 or 1980 all over again.
Kamala Harris should have a cakewalk to the Oval Office. At least, that’s what the stock market says. It’s surged to record highs since the vice president entered the race in July, which has historically been very good news for incumbent candidates.
In reality, of course, polls show a virtual dead heat, with prediction markets signaling recent momentum for Donald Trump as the race enters its final days. As the chart below shows, a Harris loss would be just the third time since World War II that a candidate representing the fortunes of an incumbent party hasn’t been correlated to the performance of the stock market. The outliers are Dwight Eisenhower’s victory in 1956, and the respective losses of Hubert Humphrey and Jimmy Carter in 1968 and 1980.
Bloomberg: The Trump Trade: Why Wall Street Is Betting on a Trump Win. “Investors are effectively betting on a Trump win — in the stock market, in the bond market, in currencies and crypto. Bloomberg Opinion’s John Authers says he’s never seen anything like it: Wall Street paying such close attention to a presidential election.He compared what is happening now to his first election he covered in the US — Dole vs Clinton in 1996.”
William Goldman: “Nobody knows anything.”
Goldman was talking about Hollywood, of course, but everyone knows Hollywood is just politics for attractive people.