Hey Traders,
Wednesday might be the best day of 2026.
Not for the market, for me.
Because I’m pretty certain that at that point, the random numbers texting me (40% of the time with the wrong name) trying to convince me to go to the polls and vote for them will have stopped.
We’ll also have the result of the election (mostly). There’ll be all kinds of pundits expounding on the lessons to be learned from this election. The day will be loaded with hyperbole on just about every subject.
If you come to our election special on Wednesday, we won’t be hyperbolizing (I promise), but we are going to break down who the sneaky winners and losers are for stocks. We’ll keep looking at these sectors in the State of the Market show and with our traders behind the curtain.
But here’s one thing I do know… selling stocks broadly because of a political outcome is just a plain bad idea. It doesn’t matter the party. People thought Obama would tank the market (we went up), then they said Trump would tank stocks… nope, we went up. Biden? Yup, we kept rallying, and so far the market has gone straight up under Trump.
Are there issues out there that could affect the market in a negative way in the near term? Yes, and it rhymes with “May Buy”… or is it “Duper Sintelligence”? That could cause the market to make big moves over the next few years.
But the party in power or not in power? Maybe you could argue that in the LONG TERM, and I’m talking years into decades, the decisions politicians make have an effect on the economy and thus the market. Even then it takes continuous mismanagement and kicking the can down the road for even THAT to matter (our leaders would NEVER do that).
My point is, whether you’re happy or sad about Tuesday’s results, the best way to celebrate or get back at the outcome isn’t to dump stocks. It’s to recognize the winners and the names that maybe win less, and take advantage of those sectors.
Typically with this kind of approach I don’t go all in on one stock. I’m going after sectors: drones, technology, healthcare. I’m either building my own basket or using an ETF of some kind.
The other thing I do is make sure the order flow I’m seeing in the Mine (my custom-built option scanner) confirms what I already believe.
If I think a sector is going up, I like to see confirmation in the form of puts being sold or calls being bought in bulk. That’s another thing I’ll be looking at on Wednesday.
Your only option,
Mark Sebastian