Itâs midterms day, Trump teases a âbig announcementâ and crypto markets tumble. President Joe Biden acknowledged Democrats face a âtougherâ
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Itâs midterms day, Trump teases a âbig announcementâ and crypto markets tumble. Midterms rush President Joe Biden acknowledged Democrats face a âtougherâ challenge holding the House than the US Senate on the eve of Tuesdayâs midterm elections. âI think itâs going to be tough but I think we can. I think weâll win the Senate. I think the House is tougher,â Biden told reporters Monday at the White House, after he was asked if Democrats would win the House. Republicans are favored to [take the House](, while the battle for the Senate is [a dead heat](, according to an analysis by FiveThirtyEight.
Trump announcement Former President Donald Trump said he would be making a [âbig announcementâ]( on Nov. 15 at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. His comments, made at a rally for Republican US Senate candidate JD Vance in Dayton, Ohio, are his strongest indication yet that he will mount a widely anticipated third White House bid. Trump has used the midterm election cycle to tighten his grip on the GOP, endorsing candidates in local, state and federal elections. Crypto crunch [Crypto markets tumbled](in unison as investors raised concerns about the industryâs stability after Binanceâs decision to sell all remaining FTT, the native token of Sam Bankman-Friedâs crypto exchange FTX. The tokens were worth $529 million at the time of Binance CEO Changpeng Zhaoâs [Twitter post]( on Nov. 6. In an article last week, news site CoinDesk said a large portion of the balance sheet of Bankman-Friedâs trading house Alameda Research was comprised of the FTT Token. Quiet markets S&P 500 futures were little changed as of 5:38 a.m. in New York, while Nasdaq 100 contracts climbed 0.3%. Treasuries were also flat across the curve, as was the dollar. The Japanese yen was the only gainer amid small moves across Group-of-10 currencies. Oil fell with gold, and Bitcoin sank along with other cryptocurrencies. Coming up⦠Itâs an eventful calendar beyond the midterm elections and a sale of $40 billion of three-year Treasury notes at 1 p.m. Earnings include Disney, Carlyle, DuPont, Occidental and News Corp. What weâve been reading Hereâs what caught our eye over the past 24 hours: - Citadelâs[Ken Griffin praises Florida]( for âa great environmentâ
- US urges Big Wall Street banks to [keep doing business](with Russia
- Chinaâs `iPhone Cityâ will probably [stay locked down](
- â[Billionaire Gucci Master](â gets 11 years in prison for fraud
- Citi is giving new UK bankers[more holidays](
- [Europeâs energy crunch]( will trigger years of shortages and blackouts
- Can Britain resist the[American fast food takeover](? And finally, hereâs what Joe is interested in this morning I saw a [pretty wild stat on Twitter]( that the 5-year total returns for XLE (the big energy ETF) is now virtually identical to that of QQQ (which has all the big tech stocks in it). Now I didn't purposely write this up on the day of the US election. But it is really remarkable how the rocket ride in energy basically started exactly on the date of the 2020 Presidential election (the green line). For as much as there's this perception that the current administration is hostile to oil and gas, the lines don't lie. The Biden years have been fantastic for oil and gas. Is that just some random coincidence? Maybe not. Back in February 2021, not long after the election, [we did an Odd Lots podcast with Jeff Currie](, the top commodity strategist at Goldman Sachs. He predicted a boom in the price of oil (and other commodities) thanks to the Biden admin's econ policy of redistributing aggregate demand downwards (by sending out checks to the public). As he argued, lower income populations not only have a higher marginal propensity to consume, their consumption is more commodity-heavy than that of higher income groups. And so there's this link between redistribution and a commodity bull market. So that's one way this administration's policies have been friendly to oil and gas. But what about all the negative rhetoric and the green push and all that? Well, one of the problems facing the oil industry pre-Covid was this "drill drill drill" race to the bottom, where everyone was spending money to increase the volume (barrels, cubic meters etc.) of output. And while that was a nice boon to the end consumer, it was a big money loser for the industry. Now these days, everyone's found religion and arenât investing like crazy. And one possible reason for that is the negative mood music about oil and gas, and all this talk of the energy transition, and the general ESG vibes. If everyone's talking about electric cars and decarbonization, who wants to spend big to drill new wells? That's a bit of an exaggeration. There is no drilling and exploration happening, but the supply response has been muted. The Obama/Trump years were all about austerity and tax cuts, which didn't give much juice to the real economy. So the big winners in those years were the Pixel Pushers in Silicon Valley. Under the new administration, we've seen this combination of booming demand for commodities (thanks to the stimulus) and also an environment that hasn't fostered much investment, creating a period of [unbelievable profitability]( for the existing players. Follow Bloomberg's Joe Weisenthal on Twitter [@TheStalwartÂ]( Follow Us Like getting this newsletter? [Subscribe to Bloomberg.com]( for unlimited access to trusted, data-driven journalism and subscriber-only insights. Before itâs here, itâs on the Bloomberg Terminal. Find out more about how the Terminal delivers information and analysis that financial professionals canât find anywhere else. [Learn more](. You received this message because you are subscribed to Bloomberg's Five Things - Americas newsletter. If a friend forwarded you this message, [sign up here]( to get it in your inbox.
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