Vice President Kamala Harris’ debate performance may have secured her as the winner among voters but a potential loser for U.S. markets, according to experts.
“I was watching the futures market last night. S&P futures turned lower right as the debate started,” Adam Turnquist, chief technical strategist for LPL Financial, said Wednesday during his appearance on “Mornings with Maria”
“When you look at the predicted order of odds in those betting markets, you did see Kamala Harris’ odds increase for a potential victory in November. Trump declining,” he said.
Turnquist went on to mention that the reaction in the market isn’t a “terrible surprise” due to former President Trump’s odds and the market being “higher correlated than Kamala Harris.”
TRUMP PROMISES TO HALT TAXES ON SOCIAL SECURITY; CITES ‘INFLATION NIGHTMARE’ FOR SENIORS
As the debate “centered” around key issues other than economic policy, he argued there were not a lot of “big takeaways from the investor standpoint.”
In the pre-market, as reported on “Mornings with Maria,” the Dow was down by 147 points, followed by the Nasdaq down 55 points and the S&P dipping 13 points.
Payne Capital Management President Ryan Payne weighed in with a slightly different read on the futures market downturn, arguing that it isn’t “exactly dramatic here.”
But Turnquist and Payne were not the only experts closely eyeing the market’s reaction to Tuesday’s ABC News Presidential Debate.
Adam Johnson, portfolio manager of the Bullseye American Ingenuity Fund, argued that Harris doing well in the debate is bad for markets.
TRUMP, VANCE CONTINUE TO HAMMER HARRIS FOR ‘COPYING’ THEIR POLICIES
He described Trump as an “angry warrior” who allowed Harris to get “under his skin” throughout the evening.
As Harris put Trump on the defensive, “you started to see the predicted odds move up in her favor and the U.S. stock futures go down because it made her look like the victor,” Johnson explained.
He argued that Trump should’ve been talking about the economy, how he was going to cut rates, stimulate growth and unleash drilling, “all things that are in his wheelhouse.”
“Instead of going there, he was on the defensive because she, the former prosecutor, put him on the defensive,” Johnson said.
In recent weeks, the vice president has been accused of adopting Trump’s policies as she quickly abandoned her position on key issues after being named the Democratic presidential candidate.
But despite Harris’ attempt to rebrand herself as a moderate centrist Democrat ahead of the election, some say the market isn’t buying it.
“I mean, if you just look at her plan superficially, and I hope it doesn’t become a plan in reality, it’s going to be higher taxes. And she wants to increase the corporate tax rate, for example, from 21% to 28%. She wants to increase capital gains taxes from 20% to 45%. She wants to, in theory, create some sort of tax on unrealized gains… All that stuff is pretty scary to the market,” Johnson stressed.
