Stock Market Holds its Breath as Trump Takes His Turn

The stock market still may underestimate the threat from Biden, still thinking he’s a moderate, but it might not matter, given the way Biden’s campaign is starting to come apart.

It’s no secret to anyone who Wall Street would prefer to win the Presidency. This is not a matter of being partisan politically, as like with the rest of the country, investors are split along party lines in their personal life, but the stock market isn’t about personal preferences, it’s about the business of stocks, who stands to help them and who stands to hurt them.

Among the two candidates for president, the divide between Donald Trump and Joe Biden could not be wider, unless Trump’s opponent had been someone like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren, who Biden faced off in the Democratic primaries and was ahead before the rains of COVID came and the game was called due to inclement weather.

Among the Democratic candidates, Biden was perceived as the most preferable nominee by Wall Street, seen as a lesser evil than his more radical opponents, and oddly enough, this view has seemed to carry over even though Biden has left his moderate seat and embraced the most radical policies of his party now. We’re not even sure where Joe stands on these issues personally, given that the party rarely allows him to speak on his own, with his being mostly limited to reading scripts on a teleprompter, scripts that are clearly written by those considerably less moderate than he.

The fact that Biden has turned into a mannequin in this race should concern the market a lot more than it appears to, as anyone who still considers him to be a moderate just hasn’t been paying attention. We actually should be counting our lucky stars that the fact that Biden has turned into a puppet for the radicals is being made very transparent, as opposed to his trying to quell these concerns, only to see his puppeteers waiting for the election to end to start making him sing and dance to their radical tunes.

Biden’s campaign has taken a big step toward radicalism lately, in a way that provides at least some hope now for those who hope that he does not win in November, which definitely includes the stock market. The only way Joe could lose is that if he loses it himself, and he has such a big lead that it would take a great deal of unraveling for this to happen, but this is now more than just a hope.

There is still a long way to go, and while it looked like there wasn’t even a realistic chance of Biden losing it, things are really starting to come together on that front lately. In fact, when we look at how things have gone so far, if we were looking to see him fail, it’s hard to imagine him on a better course.

Barrack Obama wasn’t all that thrilled to see Biden win the nomination. Obama’s comment of “don’t estimate Joe’s ability to f*** things up” is pretty telling, and many have underestimated him. All he really needed to do was to avoid too much controversy and stick appealing to his hokey appeal and his reminiscing, how much he cares about you, feeling sorry for him, and other fluff, and he would have been a shoe-in. We’re not so sure anymore.

Joe was presumably chosen because he’s more of a moderate than his major opponents, but the moment he started reading the scripts of the more radical segment of the party, he started getting himself in trouble. Never mind that he looks and sounds like someone who is clinically demented, not even knowing where he is at times and struggling mightily with speaking off the cuff, he still may have been able to cruise into the White House without any real incident.

Biden began his run by taking on all of the baggage of his colleagues, the most controversial policies of all time in American politics. Biden has always had a soft spot for raising taxes, but he’s emptied his pockets on the table and also had his cronies do the same. We thought the wealth tax was dead, but this and many other far out policies have been reborn, and they are using Joe as the mouthpiece.

Medicare for all, in some form, is back on the table as well. Bernie Sanders was being honest when, during his speech at the convention, he told his supporters that their collective radical socialist dream had not died but will live on in the campaign of Joe Biden. He wasn’t joking, as Biden has welcomed all of the ideas that were too strong for his tastes. The moderate Joe is dead, long live the new Joe, the one that is a morph of all of the hardest core ideas that the hardest core members of the party believe in.

As dangerous as this may seem to Republicans, this is the ideal opponent, someone who is barely capable of completing a sentence, and has become an empty vessel where they just pour in the most controversial platform anyone could dream up, including at least cutting down on support for law enforcement, which might be the most hideous plank on his now extremist platform.

The hope for Trump is that Biden will drive away enough people that were set to vote for him that this will turn the tide for him, and this has now become a much more realistic scenario. The list of contentious issues goes on and on like a hit parade, not only getting rid of the police but getting rid of the border patrol as well, which Democrats have compared to the KKK, giving all the illegals citizenship, welcoming a lot more, and even giving them free health care and other benefits when they come over.

They want to also be a lot easier on crime than anyone had ever dared suggest, which fits perfectly with the plan to tone down law enforcement. Biden also plans to spend trillions on fighting climate change, California style, where their looking to wean themselves off of fossil fuels has weakened their power grid, complete with rolling blackouts. California struggles so much with wildfires because they refuse to do the controlled burning that is required, claiming that the burning is not environmentally friendly, but less so than having the massive wildfires like they are dealing with again.

There’s Lots and Lots to Dislike About Joe Biden

This and more has the potential to turn plenty of people off, the maximum that Republicans could ever hope for it seems, but then came his VP pick and the convention. Prior to this point, he was still the overwhelming favorite, in spite of how polarizing he has become. That is now starting to change.

Kamala Harris is a dream pick, not for Joe, but for Donald. Their embracing of all the rioting which was supposed to be about fighting racism but instead has been focused on an extreme left political agenda needs a spokesperson, and Harris is perfect for the role. In a situation where the Republicans were dreaming that Biden’s campaign would become even more polarized, they scored a 10 with Harris.

Anyone who isn’t that fussy about having either a woman or a minority as VP got a double helping, and while we may claim that we should be above these things, the truth is that there are lots of Americans who see this as mattering. It is likely that Bernie Sanders would have beaten Trump last time around, and there surely were many who simply are not ready for a female president, and this election was close enough that this may have been the determining factor.

Biden’s numbers went down after he picked Harris, and they also went down from the convention. This is a time where a candidate’s numbers go up, not down, but not this time. If Biden loses, it may be the convention that costs him, especially his remarks in the aftermath.

The Democrats did not really have anything of real substance to say during their convention, other than to attempt an all-out attack on President Trump, blaming him for the effects of COVID-19, all of them. This was delivered in a truly unbelievable fashion that will only play to those whose hatred of the President completely blinds them to everything, but not all voters are in this category, particularly those who are only slightly leaning Joe’s way.

The Republicans are yet to bat and you can bet that they will attack the utter stupidity we saw in this convention. By staking so much on this pandemic, and with plenty of time for it to continue to ease, Biden has chained himself to this issue and his fortunes may decline right along with the infection rates.

There’s also the matter of the limitations on presidential power that Biden and his party are so unfamiliar with. Presidents can’t order anyone to wear masks or issue stay at home orders, as this is completely outside the power of either the President or Congress. He’s being taken to school as we speak for sleeping through grade school civics classes and we may see more of this as the battle wages on.

The biggest mistake that Biden has made this far though is his telling us that he would be willing to shut down the economy again if the “scientists” ask. This is why the Democrats were so protective of his speaking freely and why he hasn’t done so for so long. He’s run the gamut of trying to drive voters away up to this point, but this is an issue that will really hit a nerve with a lot of people, especially all those people still wounded from the last time we tried this.

This is the big one as far as contentious issues go, and it matters not that Biden has absolutely no power to put this sort of thing into effect, as the mere threat of this will alienate a lot of voters. There are some that would vote for anyone provided that they are running for their party, but there’s also a lot of voters who are willing to vote on the issues. Biden has done everything he can it seems to drive them away, and has managed to keep his lead pretty well, but on the course that he is on, in a single week we’ve gone from it’s in the bag to let’s not be so sure.

While Trump has narrowed the gap in the national polls a bit as a result of all this, he still has a long way to go as far as turning things around in the electoral college, where he remains very far behind. With the Republicans getting a little bump from the Democratic convention, if they can keep this momentum going at theirs, where their punches will actually land and not just attack a ridiculous straw man, we may see things tighten further.

Perhaps the best chance for the stock market and the American economy to avoid getting clobbered is the powerful weapons that the Trump campaign has at its disposal, some of which they have taken advantage of somewhat but there’s so much more they could be doing, and hopefully will be doing.

They don’t want to leave it all to Biden to drive away voters, as Biden has set himself up as a straw man and all Trump needs is to light a few well-placed matches and set this all on fire. Biden is the ultimate dream opponent in fact, with no real strengths other than his trying to portray himself as a nice guy, but one that is suffering from anger episodes that are thought by some to result from his struggle with dementia, where this is one of the classic symptoms.

We saw this with his defensive attack on an interviewer when he compared being tested for cocaine use with his being tested for cognitive decline, among other times. Trump needs to set this one ablaze, and there is much to light up with this single issue alone. He needs to show a wider audience all the gaffes that Fox News shows us but the other networks censor, and demand that Biden submit to cognitive testing and make it public.

Trump Needs to Swing for the Fences This Week

The Trump campaign has done a decent job so far as far as Biden’s tendency to be friendlier to foreign powers such as China, to the alleged detriment of American jobs, although much more could be done with this. This isn’t even a real threat and this is a weakness of Trump, as opening up trade is actually a benefit to the country, but this is a plank of Trump’s and he might as well try to hit Biden on the head with it more.

Biden’s immigration policy is an actual threat and a big one, but Trump has to make this threat more transparent, showing people the real costs of this, especially what this will do to our labor market. There are very good reasons why immigration policies are necessary, and he needs to explain why in an easily understood way.

The way that the Democrats are approaching seeking to get rid of racism is a huge opportunity for Trump, and this is one of the areas that the ground has yet to be turned. People need to understand how this bombastic approach will only serve to make racial relations worse, a lot worse. If you use anger and hatred to try to ease anger and hatred, all you will end up with is more anger and hatred on both sides.

Trump has tried to make plenty of hay with his attack on Biden and the Democrats supporting anarchy and their goals of defunding the police, and they have only backed off a little and we’re already seeing crime and violence dramatically increase. Showing people more clearly where this leads to, which involves far more than just not being able to call the police, can be further illuminated.

We don’t hear a lot about the Democrats’ approach to incarceration, and letting criminals out of prison too soon or not even putting them there in the first place can serve to rightly scare a lot of people. Law and order is one of Trump’s strengths, and a huge weakness for Biden.

Another issue that the Trump campaign hasn’t even touched yet is the effect of the massive spending that is in store for us if Biden wins and he gets to play in his sandbox. Whether or not some of these plans will ever see the light of day, that doesn’t really matter, as Biden is standing alongside these ideas and needs to be accountable. This is the real disaster that is closer and closer to our doorstep, not global warming, and although we do not expect Trump’s people to be familiar enough with this one, they definitely should be as this is by far the most dangerous of Biden’s ideas.

Biden’s plan to raise corporate taxes is another opportunity, to show voters who really pays the price for this. He could show how much his corporate tax cuts helped the labor market, and then show how Biden will send us the other way with his tax hikes. We need to show people the numbers here so they get it.

Biden tells people that his campaign is all about jobs, and it is, they just need to realize that he is speaking about losing a lot of them, not adding them. At this time of high unemployment, the pain of this will be felt particularly hard, as this is much more than just turning back the clock to the Obama and Biden days, this will take us a lot deeper into the ground thanks to the way we shut the economy down.

Since Biden has made the pandemic the central issue by far, Trump particularly needs to attack on this front. He can start by working out how maintaining this lockdown would have played out economically, if we never did open up things, and project that forward. He also needs to distance himself from the harm this did, as it was clear from the start that this was not his idea at all, not that he could have done anything to stop it.

How poorly this has worked also needs to be made more transparent, which gets hinted at from time to time. Just questioning the evidence that we have about this working, which happens to be none, would be a start. He might also want to point out that among the 9 states that didn’t issue statewide stay at home orders, their average death rate per million is only 208, versus the national average of 541.

Trump also needs to point out that this is completely decided at the state level, and the federal government doesn’t even have any say in these things, although they do have say with banning flights from certain countries, which even Fauci and his gang admit saved a lot of lives, while Biden protested.

Among the states that are run by Republicans, the death toll has been noticeably less, 345 per million on average, as opposed to the 539 per million in Democratic states. Joe Biden can’t lock anything up, but he sure can encourage his Democratic friends to, but even they are subject to the protests of their people, who they answer to, not Biden.

The fact that the majority of states locked down in spite of Trump not preferring them to speaks loudly enough to the President not having any say in this matter at all, which he needs to clarify with the electorate.

There’s also what will likely happen to the stock market should Biden win. This is being portrayed by the Democrats as the playground of the elite, but Trump needs to explain more to voters how much their stocks will suffer as a result of him not getting re-elected and how wide the swath of this tornado will be.

Anyone who has any significant money in the stock market should be told that a quarter of their life savings may disappear if Biden wins, according to experts. Trump can tell people how well the market is doing all he wants, but he needs to make this more transparent, and underscore the utter importance of this to so many Americans.

Half of Americans own stocks and many are staking their retirement on the performance of the market, where under Trump, even the massive recession hasn’t hurt stocks yet. Once Biden is in the White House, with him specifically targeting Wall Street, investors need to feel the fear.

The Democrats have had their turn at bat, and claim home runs when all they really hit were foul balls out of the park. The home team is now coming up to bat, and nothing less than hitting it out of the park will do. They need to swing for the fences if they want to win this game.

Editor, MarketReview.com

John’s sensible advice on all matters related to personal finance will have you examining your own life and tweaking it to achieve your financial goals better.

Contact John: john@marketreview.com

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