1. Bond Market Watch
TLT -10% correction going into election…Sitting on 200-day—third time since Summer.
2. 10-Year Bond Same Chart
3. Perplexity AI Telling me 10-Year Return on AGG Bond Index is 1.81%…Inflation Adjusted Negative.
4. Russell 2000 Small Cap +6% Pre-Market
Jack Ablin Cresset
High-Quality US Small Caps Best Performers Immediately Post-Elections-High-quality US small caps (S&P 600) tend to be the best-performing equity sector in the days following a presidential election. The S&P 600 advanced in six of the last seven elections in the 90 days following elections, with 2008 the notable exception. Going back to 1996, the S&P 600 enjoyed a median 8.7 per cent return between Election Day and Inauguration Day, outpacing all major equity asset classes, although with a higher high and a lower low than their counterparts.
5. Tech Earnings Still Rising
Irrelevant Investor Blog
https://www.theirrelevantinvestor.com/p/animal-spirits-a-once-in-a-lifetime-investment-opportunity
6. Business Insider: Trump still has 4 criminal indictments waiting for him — here’s what happens now that he’s won
Natalie Musumeci, Laura Italiano, and Joshua Nelken-Zitser
- Winning the 2024 election can help Donald Trump in all four of his criminal cases.
- Trump has vowed to fire the special prosecutor who brought two federal cases against him.
- Being president-elect may also help him delay his state cases in Georgia and New York.
Donald Trump‘s presidential victory is also a win as he seeks to resolve his four criminal indictments.
His win may largely free Trump from dealing with his criminal cases for the foreseeable future, experts told Business Insider.
“Setting politics aside, there is a lot at stake legally for Trump” in the November 5 election, former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani predicted early in the day Tuesday.
Here’s what will happen with Trump’s four criminal cases — two federal and two state — moving forward.
Donald Trump confers with his defense lawyer Todd Blanche in his hush-money trial before New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan. Jane Rosenberg/AP
The New York hush-money case
Trump, the first US president convicted of a crime, has a November 26 Manhattan sentencing date on his calendar.
He faces a sentencing range of as little as no jail and as much as four years in prison for his May conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to cover up his $130,000 hush-money payment to the adult film actor Stormy Daniels.
There is a chance the sentencing date will be delayed. Trump has promised to fight his indictment and conviction in New York’s appellate courts. He will likely argue that the evidence in the case includes acts that took place while serving in his official role as president — evidence that would be barred under July’s landmark US Supreme Court presidential immunity decision.
Once he’s sentenced, experts say further appeals could keep a jail sentence on hold for years — though a jail sentence is highly unlikely, a quartet of former New York judges previously told BI.Winning the presidency could now push things back even further, as Trump could argue he’s too busy running the country to tend to his personal legal issues.
Prior to the election results, Michael Dorf, a Cornell Law School professor, predicted that if Trump won, he would quickly file court papers to delay the sentencing until he is no longer president.
Rahmani, the president and cofounder of West Coast Trial Lawyers, said that he does not believe Trump would be sentenced to jail “regardless of the outcome of the election.”
“Trump winning makes it logistically impossible and a certainty that he won’t receive any time,” Rahmani said.
Trump’s federal cases Trump was indicted on two federal charges, both brought by special counsel Jack Smith, which would be eligible for presidential pardon, though a self-pardon has never been tried.Once president, Trump could ask his attorney general to fire Smith. He could also ask the courts to halt the federal prosecutions as there is long-standing Justice Department policy that a sitting president cannot be prosecuted while in office or attempt to pardon himself, said Dorf.
Trump said on a conservative radio interview last month that if elected, he would fire Smith “within two seconds.”
Justice Department regulations stipulate that a special counsel can only be fired for a good cause, but Trump could have his attorney general rescind that regulation, Dorf said.
Firing Smith “is basically his right as president, though I would expect Smith to resign before then, just as a matter of course,” said Michel Paradis, an attorney who teaches national security and constitutional law at Columbia Law School.
“The key thing to watch would be what Jack Smith does between Election Day and January 20 to potentially protect those prosecutions from interference,” Paradis said.
“There’s not a lot he can do to make them ironclad since, at the end of the day, the president does control the Justice Department,” Paradis added,Paradis said that before Trump took the oath of office, Smith could try to stay both proceedings, on the grounds that sitting presidents cannot be prosecuted while in office.Trump has pleaded not guilty to both federal indictments.
Asked for a comment, Steven Cheung, Trump’s campaign spokesman, told BI: “The Lyin’ Kamala Harris – Crooked Joe Biden Witch Hunts against President Trump have imploded just like their failed campaign, and should all be dismissed in light of the Supreme Court’s historic decision on immunity and other vital jurisprudence.”
A DOJ spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The federal election-interference caseEven if Trump had lost, Smith’s prosecution of Trump on charges he tried to overturn the 2020 election wouldn’t necessarily have barrelled ahead at full speed.Citizen Trump could have continued to challenge the election-interference case on the grounds of presidential immunity, experts said.
In July, the US Supreme Court issued a landmark opinion that provides presidents with broad protection from being prosecuted for official acts while in office. The opinion also bars the use of official-act evidence in any prosecution of a former president, even on charges not relating to official acts.In August, Smith won a revised indictment that narrowed the charges against Trump to cover acts he took as a private, office-seeking citizen.
The federal classified documents case
Another federal charge against Trump, alleging he failed to return classified government documents he took from the White House, was dismissed in July by the Trump-appointed US District Judge Aileen Cannon, who said Smith’s appointment violated the Constitution.The dismissal, which argues Congress should have approved Smith’s appointment, is now being appealed by Smith in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. Smith’s appeal revolves around what he calls “the long tradition of special-counsel appointments by Attorneys’ General.”
The Georgia election-interference case
The election interference case in Georgia against Trump and 18 of his associates remains in legal limbo, thanks to the defendants’ efforts to get the Fulton County district attorney, Fani Willis, disqualified from the case.In May, a Georgia appeals court agreed to consider Trump’s bid to get Willis removed from the case.Attorneys for Trump and his codefendants argued that Willis had a conflict of interest in the case because she improperly benefited from a romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, the Atlanta lawyer she hired as a special prosecutor.
After an evidentiary hearing earlier this year, a judge ruled that Willis and her office could remain on the case so long as Wade stepped aside, and Wade announced his resignation hours later.Trump has pleaded not guilty to the Georgia indictment.If Trump had lost the election, the case could have moved forward, though Trump would likely have moved to get it dismissed based on the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity ruling.
As the election winner, however, he can file papers with the Georgia court “saying you got to put this on hold for the time that I’m president because it’s just not consistent with federal supremacy to have a state prosecuting a sitting president,” Dorf, a constitutional law expert, told BI on Tuesday.
“He doesn’t control the prosecutors, so you can’t fire them, and he can’t pardon himself because these are state crimes, so his only option really in the state cases is suspend them,” said Dorf.
November 6, 2026: This story was updated after the election was called for Donald Trump.
https://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-election-criminal-cases-presidency-2024-11
7. The French crypto whale looks to have made $47 million from his Trump bets
Marketwatch By Steve Goldstein
The French national who ran four interrelated accounts on the crypto betting site Polymarket has profited handsomely from his bets on former President Donald Trump.The user’s combined profit was over $47 million, according to MarketWatch calculations of the accounts.
The accounts — Fredi9999, Theo4, PrincessCaro and Michie — can be viewed in real time.
The size of the user’s bets were so large that some had feared it was deliberate market manipulation.
But the site’s own investigation — as well as an interview conducted by the Wall Street Journal — said the user simply had a strong belief that Trump would win and bet accordingly.
8. The Global Wellness Industry is Bigger than Sport and Pharma…$6.32 Trillion
Bloomberg By Sarah Rappaport
The global wellness industry was worth $6.32 trillion in 2023, according to a new report from the Global Wellness Institute, a leading industry group. That’s 25% larger than it was in 2019, making it bigger than the sports and pharmaceutical industries.
“Growth was even stronger than we predicted,” says Katherine Johnson, one of the authors of the Global Wellness Economy Monitor. She added that the wellness industry was boosted by the focus on health and well-being as a result of the pandemic. Research from the nonprofit argues that trends such as an aging population, chronic disease and an increased focus on mental health are helping drive growth.
9. As America’s Marijuana Use Grows, So Do the Harms -NY Times
The drug, legal in much of the country, is widely seen as nonaddictive and safe. For some users, these assumptions are dangerously wrong. By Megan TwoheyDanielle Ivory and Carson Kessler
The reporters are continuing to examine cannabis policies, use of the drug and the rise of the commercial market. If you have a story or information to share, please contact us here.
In midcoast Maine, a pediatrician sees teenagers so dependent on cannabis that they consume it practically all day, every day — “a remarkably scary amount,” she said.
From Washington State to West Virginia, psychiatrists treat rising numbers of people whose use of the drug has brought on delusions, paranoia and other symptoms of psychosis.
And in the emergency departments of small community hospitals and large academic medical centers alike, physicians encounter patients with severe vomiting induced by the drug — a potentially devastating condition that once was rare but now, they say, is common. “Those patients look so sick,” said a doctor in Ohio, who described them “writhing around in pain.”
As marijuana legalization has accelerated across the country, doctors are contending with the effects of an explosion in the use of the drug and its intensity. A $33 billion industry has taken root, turning out an ever-expanding range of cannabis products so intoxicating they bear little resemblance to the marijuana available a generation ago. Tens of millions of Americans use the drug, for medical or recreational purposes — most of them without problems.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/04/us/cannabis-marijuana-risks-addiction.html
10. Writing = Thinking
Paul Graham
October 2024
I’m usually reluctant to make predictions about technology, but I feel fairly confident about this one: in a couple decades there won’t be many people who can write.
One of the strangest things you learn if you’re a writer is how many people have trouble writing. Doctors know how many people have a mole they’re worried about; people who are good at setting up computers know how many people aren’t; writers know how many people need help writing.
The reason so many people have trouble writing is that it’s fundamentally difficult. To write well you have to think clearly, and thinking clearly is hard.
And yet writing pervades many jobs, and the more prestigious the job, the more writing it tends to require.
These two powerful opposing forces, the pervasive expectation of writing and the irreducible difficulty of doing it, create enormous pressure. This is why eminent professors often turn out to have resorted to plagiarism. The most striking thing to me about these cases is the pettiness of the thefts. The stuff they steal is usually the most mundane boilerplate — the sort of thing that anyone who was even halfway decent at writing could turn out with no effort at all. Which means they’re not even halfway decent at writing.
Till recently there was no convenient escape valve for the pressure created by these opposing forces. You could pay someone to write for you, like JFK, or plagiarize, like MLK, but if you couldn’t buy or steal words, you had to write them yourself. And as a result nearly everyone who was expected to write had to learn how.
Not anymore. AI has blown this world open. Almost all pressure to write has dissipated. You can have AI do it for you, both in school and at work.
The result will be a world divided into writes and write-nots. There will still be some people who can write. Some of us like it. But the middle ground between those who are good at writing and those who can’t write at all will disappear. Instead of good writers, ok writers, and people who can’t write, there will just be good writers and people who can’t write.
Is that so bad? Isn’t it common for skills to disappear when technology makes them obsolete? There aren’t many blacksmiths left, and it doesn’t seem to be a problem.
Yes, it’s bad. The reason is something I mentioned earlier: writing is thinking. In fact there’s a kind of thinking that can only be done by writing. You can’t make this point better than Leslie Lamport did:
If you’re thinking without writing, you only think you’re thinking.
So a world divided into writes and write-nots is more dangerous than it sounds. It will be a world of thinks and think-nots. I know which half I want to be in, and I bet you do too.
This situation is not unprecedented. In preindustrial times most people’s jobs made them strong. Now if you want to be strong, you work out. So there are still strong people, but only those who choose to be.
It will be the same with writing. There will still be smart people, but only those who choose to be.
https://paulgraham.com/writes.html Found at Abnormal Returns Blog www.abnormalreturns.com