Election Day Won't Settle the Two Money Fights That Matter Most
Americans voted on November 3, 2026, in midterm elections that could shape the final two years of President Trump's agenda, Reuters. Options traders, who buy and sell contracts that pay off based on how far a price moves, were pricing a stock move of about 0.8% around the date, according to MarketWatch. For a whole market, that is a small expected swing.
The equity case for an election-day lift leans partly on seasonality, the idea that markets behave in somewhat predictable ways at certain points in the calendar or political cycle. Edward Jones found that, since 1970, the S&P 500, an index tracking 500 large U.S. companies, has gained in every six-month period following a midterm election year, as Reuters reported.
That is a clean record, but it is a historical pattern, not a forecast. A handful of six-month windows tells you where the market has been, and very little about where it goes next.
Election betting is also growing. More than $1.4 billion had been wagered on election outcomes on prediction markets, platforms where people trade contracts on yes-or-no questions, as of November 3, per Reuters.
Those prices show where money is leaning, which makes them a useful read on the crowd. A traded price is not a measured probability, though, and anyone using them should keep that difference in mind.
The most concrete fiscal item is the stopgap. Funding for most federal agency programs was scheduled to expire at midnight on September 30, the end of the federal fiscal year, which runs from October through September. In early August, key senators unveiled a short-term spending bill that would keep agencies funded past the midterm elections, according to the Associated Press. The Senate passed a short-term funding bill on August 8, and the House subsequently approved legislation to keep federal agencies operating beyond October 1. President Trump signed a bill on September 3 to keep agencies operating beyond October 1 and avert a shutdown before the midterms.
That removes the immediate cliff, but it does not remove the fight. MarketWatch describes a looming government-spending showdown as one of two big money questions the midterms will not resolve.
For fixed-income investments, meaning bonds and other assets that pay a set return, and for rate-sensitive sectors such as utilities and homebuilders, the practical issue is the timing and size of the next appropriations decision. Markets tend to price a shutdown risk well before it arrives. In my view, the absence of a near-term deadline may shrink that premium without eliminating the uncertainty.
The second fight concerns AI infrastructure. As of September 2026, about 45 U.S. data center projects worth $68 billion had been blocked or delayed amid mounting opposition, according to Bloomberg. Data centers are the large facilities that house the computers powering AI. In March, Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez announced the AI Data Center Moratorium Act of 2026. That is a proposal, and it has not advanced into law.
The bill's real significance is what it signals about local and federal resistance to the buildout, which is a different question from whether it passes.
For anyone with exposure to AI capital spending, the relevant risk is schedule. A project delayed by opposition pushes its revenue, power draw, and financing timeline further out. That touches utilities, equipment suppliers, and the large tech companies counting on that capacity. Investors who focus only on the election result may be watching the wrong variable. Gridlock, in MarketWatch's framing, is what the market appears to like, but gridlock does not stop a county commission from pausing a site.
The election result will arrive quickly. The spending deadline and the data center disputes sit on a longer clock, and on MarketWatch's reading they will outlast the ballot count. In my view, readers should weigh the vote and these two issues separately, because the modest 0.8% expectation for the event day says little about either.
