NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks are surging Wednesday after President Donald Trump’s party lost its sole control of Washington in the midterm elections.
Stocks generally do well in the months following any
midterm U.S. election, regardless of who wins, and the S&P 500 soared 1.8% toward its best day in three months. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 1,112 points, or 2.1%, as of 10 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 2.4% higher.
Stocks of solar-power companies helped lead the way as Wall Street tried to sort the winners and losers from the widespread losses for Republicans. Investors, meanwhile, see risks ahead for Trump’s social-media company, the artificial-intelligence industry and businesses owned by Elon Musk, who donated heavily to Republicans.
Strategists along Wall Street had been urging investors not to get swept up in the election because it may not matter much for the broad market in the long term. Prices for stocks depend more on where profits for companies and interest rates are heading than on who controls what in Washington.
“Earnings trump elections,” according to Brian Jacobsen, chief economic strategist at Annex Wealth Management.
Still, Wall Street may have gotten a preferred political scenario as Democrats are set to take control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives. That could counterbalance Trump's White House, and Wall Street generally prefers split control of Washington because it lessens the risk of transformative changes to the economy.
Much remains impossible to predict, of course, and Trump retains executive authority over key areas such as defense, foreign policy and in some instances trade.
A downbeat forecast could be that “Trump is not now a lame duck, but an angry duck” who might restart tensions over tariffs and NATO allies’ levels of military spending, said Carsten Brzeski, global chief of macro at ING Bank.
An optimistic view, Brzeski said, is that Trump becomes “a tame duck ... that he will slow down any disruptive efforts and that he will put more focus on trying to win the Nobel Peace Prize by ending the two big wars without big disruption, and on trade, nothing happens but a few words.”
Here’s a look at some of the moves rippling through financial markets:
Trump’s social-media company, Trump Media & Technology Group, was one of the market’s bigger losers following the election and dropped 9.5%. It had already come into the day with a loss of 55.1% for the year so far as Trump’s approval ratings had weakened.
Since briefly touching a peak of $175 five years ago, it’s dropped toward $5. Its main business is Truth Social, which is most well known for Trump’s postings on the platform.
Elon Musk’s businesses also struggled. Tesla fell 3.6%, and SpaceX sank 3%. Musk, a former top Trump adviser, is among the possible targets for investigations by a Democratic-controlled Congress.
Trump has been a big backer of the AI industry, and Democratic control of Capitol Hill could mean more regulation or restrictions for the industry. Concerns have grown across political parties about AI in general.
Investors see Democratic victories in Texas in particular as possibly slowing the buildout of further AI data centers.
Nvidia, the chip company that quickly became the poster child of the frenzy around AI-related stocks, slipped 0.5% after falling as much as 2.8% earlier in the morning. CoreWeave, a company that rents out access to AI chips to customers over the loud, fell 6.8%
Advanced Micro Devices, another chip giant, held up better. It rose 3.4% after reporting much stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected.
Democratic control of Congress could light the way for companies in the solar and wind industries. First Solar jumped 11.1%, and Enphase Energy climbed 11.6%.
In the bond market, Treasury yields eased. That could be a signal that investors see less risk of Washington piling even more debt onto its already big mountain.
Treasury yields had surged through the summer and reached their highest levels in decades because of worries about the U.S. government’s big debt, along with higher inflation and other concerns. A Congress controlled by Democrats could provide a check against more spending and cuts to taxes that would widen Washington’s deficit.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.92% from 4.95% late Tuesday.
Indexes climbed across most of the world. Stocks jumped 2.2% in Paris, 2.2% in Shanghai and 1.8% in London. Japan’s Nikkei 225 was an outlier and fell 1.4%.
Stocks worldwide got a boost from easing oil prices. Brent crude, the international standard, dropped 2.9% to $100.63 amid continued uncertainty about what the war with Iran will mean for the global energy industry.
The price for the most actively traded contract in the Brent market has been veering between roughly $70 and $120 per barrel since just before the war with Iran began.
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AP Writer Elaine Lai contributed to this report from Hong Kong, and McHugh contributed from Frankfurt, Germany.
