Episode 47: Election day results with a Biden lead.

Happy Friday.  Wow, what a week it’s been as we navigated through the election results and it looks like we will wrap up the week with Biden becoming president-elect. 

As the week progressed, the markets trended higher as gains were found across every sector. Investors were encouraged by conversations that could resume on stimulus and a renewed focus with Biden addressing the pandemic. 

Wall Street is turning its attention to the stocks that could outperform under a divided government. One of the early winners appeared to be major technology stocks, which led the market rally. Many investors believe that a potentially split Congress means more favorable policies for the high-growth sector. Large cap, small cap, defensive, growth stocks, and cyclical were up 7-8% and S&P was up 7% this week. Also jobs report came in favorably with a 6.9 vs 7.9  down tick, which led the markets 30 points on the open today. 

In a shocking move, the U.S. Justice Department yesterday sued to block Visa's proposed $5.3 billion purchase of Plaid, which was first announced in January.

Why it matters: DOJ is alleging that the deal would "eliminate a nascent competitive threat" within the online debit services market. That is a much higher legal bar to clear than would be a typical antitrust argument about consolidating existing market share.

Hit the gas: California voters have approved Proposition 22, which classifies app-based drivers for companies such as Uber and Lyft as independent contractors instead of employees. Although this is great news for gig economy, Uber shares dropped as much as 4% after-hours Thursday as the company reported third quarter revenue that missed Wall Street’s expectations, but picked up during the company’s earnings call when the CEO said there are early signs its core ride-hailing business would fully recover from the Covid 19 pandemic.

Friday Markets Closed Flat Today 

Dow 30 28,323.40 -66.78( -0.24%)

S&P 500 3,509.44 -1.01 (-0.03%)

Nasdaq 11,895.23 +4.30 (+0.04%)

IPO 

As we have been following Airbnb’s plans to make its IPO registration public next week, this puts it on course for a market debut in December even as the COVID-19 pandemic intensifies.  We will also see IN8bio, a Phase 1 biotech developing allogeneic gamma-delta T cell therapies for cancers, announced terms and will IPO next week.  

We are excited to wrap up the election results as we move into the holiday season.  Have a great weekend and we will see you Monday!