Wall Street reacts to 2026 Midterm Election results

Wall Street had a wild reaction to the midterm election results. Stocks, futures tumbled overnight before markets rebounded today. With Democrats taking control of Congress, investors are weighing what divided government means for taxes, regulations, and the economy. So what does it really mean for your money? Business analyst Mark Lee joins us now tonight to explain. Mark, it's good to see you. Thanks for joining us. All right, we don't have a crystal ball, but we've seen this movie before. The flip-flop always happens, it seems like this, Well, you have a president... You make some choices that people don't like, the midterms come along, it's a referendum, they flip it. This has happened with Obama, it's happened with Clinton, and now it's happening with Trump. What do you make of the economy moving forward? Well, what I make of it is that people were uncertain right until the midterms happened yesterday, and once they got a sense of what the direction of the country is going to be with the Democrats primarily taking over, you found a sense of relief. And so people started to invest in the market. So you saw a big shift in the market today. It grew significantly. And I think moving forward, what we're going to find is it's going to settle back down. And the reason for that is because people, again, they had that certainty. But leading up to the midterms, there was a lot of uncertainty. So people were kind of pulling back on the investments. So moving forward, I would expect it to continue to grow, but much more on the slope. That's interesting. So the uncertainty, that word obviously has a huge factor and plays a big role in how companies decide to act moving forward. Now they have a playbook of sorts, right? Yeah, they do. So what does that mean for them? You think it gives them some confidence? Yeah, they have a playbook. They still want to see how this is going to play itself out. The election was just yesterday. And they're not getting sworn in until January, so you still got the remainder of this year. To still figure out how to work with President Trump and the other people in Washington DC right now. So they have a playbook, they have a chance to kind of figure out how to navigate that playbook. So I think we're gonna find this business is gonna say, should we begin to invest again? Should we begin to hire? Or again, do we hold back until the new Congress is sworn in? So it could be just kind of a state of stagnation, or we're just waiting between now, which is November, and January, and we'll kind of see status quo? That's exactly what I'm expecting right now. Don't expect things to flip overnight, right? I think exactly the words you just used, status quo, and I think that's what's going to happen between now and basically January 1st. What happens with the stock market moving forward? Because we've seen a pretty robust stock market so far, but it is interesting because now you have control. Of the House and the Senate with the Democrats. Does that influence? The stock market moving forward based on policies that people believe that these Democrats will implement? Yes, it does, actually. And I think what influences the stock market the most, quite frankly, is this thing called certainty. We talk about uncertainty. And whenever there's uncertainty, people kind of pull back. But now that they have certainty, knowing that who's going to be in charge, if you will, for lack of a better phrase, between now and the end of the year, you're going to find people probably putting their dollars back into the markets. I would expect it to continue to grow, but the The key word here is certainty versus uncertainty. What about the war in Iran and the fuel? I mean, we have gas prices, grocery prices, could we see prices drop before the end of the year? No, I don't think so. And again, I'm gonna say one more time, the reason I would say that is, it took us six months to get to this point. And even if you got a decision tomorrow, it's going to take a significant amount of time to get those prices to drop back down. So I would not anticipate any movement. If we do have movement, it's gonna be short term, but I wouldn't anticipate any long term movement. Before the end of the year. So with the economy, you have something happen and then you have kind of a lag before you see the effects of that. There's a lag. This has not switched overnight. So just got to be patient and continue to do what you got to do. But also continue to watch the market and continue to watch you on the news to figure out what's going on as well. And as we continue to watch it, we'll tap into your business expertise. Business analyst Mark Lee, we'll have you back to chat about it again. Thank you very much. Thank you so much.