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The Senate Seeks to Reduce the Deficit Through More Spending

Senate Democrats, feeling confident from their net gain of two seats in last week’s election, say any deficit-reduction package negotiated in the coming weeks must include stimulus measures.

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Hulbert: Meaning of 200-day Average’s Violation

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (MarketWatch) — The stock market’s 200-day moving average has now been decisively broken.

According to many technical analysts, that means that the market’s major trend has turned down. But how good a track record does this trend-following indicator really have?

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The US Stock Market – Where the Big Dogs are Alpha-less

Haim Bodek has published a white paper on his website that you should all read, titled HFT Scalping Strategies. It outlines in a somewhat general way the concept of HFT Scalping Strategies, which serve as a cornerstone of the overwhelming majority of HFT strategies deployed in the market place, including but not limited to rebate arbitrage.

The scalping strategies are “alpha-less”, meaning that they are microstructure oriented – they use features such as the multitude of order types and the low-latency sold by the exchanges in order to gain queue position in the limit order books, as well as the “insurance” against  being adversely selected. According to Bodek:

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Worst One Day Reactions to Presidential Elections

Via Bespoke:

So much for yesterday’s rally.  With a decline of 2.2%, the DJIA is on pace for its fifth worse one day decline following a Presidential Election Day since 1900.  The worst one day decline came in 2008 when the S&P 500 dropped 5.0% following Barack Obama’s election.  Interestingly, while stocks have typically performed better under Democratic administrations, the five worst one day reactions to a Presidential Election all came following Democratic victories (gray shading).

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The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly Election Night Drinking Games

Via Zero Hedge, this looks to be the bible of Election Night Drinking Games:

While some believe tonight is critical to the future of our nation – and well could be – we believe some will need placating as the results roll across the bottom of their screens and are manipulated in an ever-increasing multitude of 10-dimensional holographic charts that we fully expect to work incorrectly at some point. To fulfil that ‘need for numbing’, we have found three drinking games of varying suspected quantity that we hope will prove useful. From simple and stand-alone, to team-based and punish-your-friends focused, we believe there is a fair-and-balanced approach here for everyone.

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Report: Two Ohio Election Judges Removed for Allowing Unregistered Voters to Cast Ballots

Another one with poor sourcing…

Breitbart News has just received reports from citizen journalists in Ohio that two precinct election judges were removed by Hamilton County Director of Elections for allowing unregistered voters to cast ballots.

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Liberals Panic: First Exit Polls Shows Economy Still the Top Concern

WASHINGTON (AP) — Preliminary results of an exit poll conducted for The Associated Press show that the presidential election hinges once again on the economy.

The survey of voters as they leave polling places Tuesday shows 6 in 10 voters say the economy is the top issue facing the nation, with unemployment and rising prices hitting voters hard.

About 4 in 10 say they think the nation’s economy is on the mend, but more say that things are getting worse or are bad and stagnating.

About half of voters say the previous president, George W. Bush, shoulders more of the blame for economic challenges than President Barack Obama.

Just a quarter of those surveyed in the exit poll say they are better off than four years ago.

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Ohio GOP Secretary of State orders secret, last minute, unaudited software updates to voting machines

I don’t see any sourcing in the article, but its worth a read so that you know what the Wednesday morning talking points will be…

Republican Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted has asked voting machine giant ES&S to install last-minute, unverified, custom firmware updates on the state’s voting machines. This is highly irregular, and the details of it are shrouded in secrecy and silence — the few, terse statements from Husted’s office on the matter have been self-contradictory and unhelpful. On Salon, Brad Friedman tries to untangle the mess, and concludes that it’s impossible to say what the new software in Ohio’s voting machines actually does, nor why unaudited, unapproved software should be added to voting machines in a critical swing-state at the last minute, but that it’s highly suspicious and possibly illegal.

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Las Vegas Review-Journal Editorial: Obama is an Embarassment, a Narcissistic Amateur

This administration is an embarrassment on foreign policy and incompetent at best on the economy – though a more careful analysis shows what can only be a perverse and willful attempt to destroy our prosperity. Back in January 2008, Barack Obama told the editorial board of the San Francisco Chronicle that under his cap-and-trade plan, “If somebody wants to build a coal-fired power plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them.” He added, “Under my plan … electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.” It was also in 2008 that Mr. Obama’s future Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, famously said it would be necessary to “figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe” – $9 a gallon.

Yet the president now claims he’s in favor of oil development and pipelines, taking credit for increased oil production on private lands where he’s powerless to block it, after he halted the Keystone XL Pipeline and oversaw a 50 percent reduction in oil leases on public lands.

These behaviors go far beyond “spin.” They amount to a pack of lies. To return to office a narcissistic amateur who seeks to ride this nation’s economy and international esteem to oblivion, like Slim Pickens riding the nuclear bomb to its target at the end of the movie “Dr. Strangelove,” would be disastrous.

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The S&P 500 Change Following Presidential Elections

Some excellent analysis by Bill McBride:

For fun on a Sunday: I’ve been asked frequently how investors will react to the election. First, every election is different. Sometimes it is obvious who is going to win, and the election results are completely expected (like Reagan in 2004 or Clinton in 1996). Other times the election is close (this election is close although I expect President Obama to be reelected).

Sometimes the economy is clearly headed into recession like in 2008. The 2000 election was during the ongoing decline following the stock bubble, and the election was especially unsettling because the Supreme Court made the final decision.

There are always some partisan analysts who predict doom if their candidate doesn’t win (see Bruce Bartlett’s Partisan Bias and Economic Forecasts). But any “doom” related to the election will be in the intermediate or long term, not in 2013.

The following graph shows the change in the S&P 500 from election day through the end of the year for all elections since 1952. Note: The number of trading days varied mostly because of the timing of the election.

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Weather experts on Hurricane Sandy: ‘You have not seen this before’

On satellite, Hurricane Sandy appeared somewhat disheveled. Massive, but weakened, as if it was being pulled apart by the forces around it.

Along the New Jersey Shore, some were already dismissing it, vowing to ignore evacuation orders and ride it out. After all, Tropical Storm Irene wasn’t that bad.

Make no mistake: You have not seen a storm like this.

It is not Irene. It is not the Ash Wednesday Storm of 1962. It is not the Long Island Express hurricane of 1938.

These are some of the worst storms in state history, and forecasters say Sandy could beat them all.

“The message we’re trying to get out to people is, no matter how old they are, they’ve never seen this before,” said Gary Szatkowski, meteorologist in charge at the National Weather Service. “If they’re relying on past experiences, it is not going to serve them well. We want you to be out of harm’s way.”

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Wall Street Makes Plans to Open Monday Even as Sandy Bears Down

(Reuters) – New York-based stock exchanges are sending officials into Manhattan on Sunday to stay in hotels and coworkers’ homes as the NYSE and Nasdaq prepare to open for business on Monday, even as Hurricane Sandy closes off public transportation links.

Hurricane Sandy is expected to slam into the East Coast on Monday night, bringing torrential rains, high winds, severe flooding and power outages, forecasters said. The rare “super storm,” created by an Arctic jetstream wrapping itself around a tropical storm, could be the biggest to hit the U.S. mainland.

New York’s subway, bus and rail systems will suspend service by 7 p.m. EDT on Sunday, Governor Andrew Cuomo said, which means there will be no public transportation into or within the city. About 8.5 million commuters use the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s rail, bus and subway lines daily.

A spokesman for NYSE Euronext said after the Cuomo announcement that the New York Stock Exchange was monitoring the situation but still planned to open for trading on Monday. A spokesman for Nasdaq OMX Group referred Reuters’ inquiry to a previous statement that said the Nasdaq would open for trading as normal on Monday.

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Hurricane and Natural Disaster Stocks (*STORM)

Index Description: These companies have either acknowledged the beneficial impact of hurricane-related sales on seasonal performance, or are in direct competition with firms that have.

See the index and its constituents here.

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5 Reasons Sandy Will Be Epic

Hurricane Sandy is moving toward the northeast. At some point, it is expected to become what’s known as an extratropical storm. Unlike a tropical system like a hurricane, which gets its power from warm ocean waters, extratropical systems are driven by temperature contrasts in the atmosphere. At some point, Sandy will strike the East Coast.

Although Sandy is currently a hurricane, it’s important not to focus too much on its official category or its precise path. It’s a massive system that will affect a huge swath of the eastern U.S., regardless of exactly where it hits or its precise wind speed. For example, tropical storm-force winds can be felt 450 miles away from the storm’s center, according to the National Hurricane Center. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has personnel and supplies spread as far west as the Ohio River Valley, said Craig Fugate, the agency’s director.

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Massive Hurricane Sandy Building a Huge and Destructive Storm Surge

Published: 2:34 PM GMT on October 28, 2012

Massive and dangerous Hurricane Sandy has grown to record size as it barrels northeastwards along the North Carolina coast at 10 mph. At 8 am EDT, Sandy’s tropical storm-force winds extended northeastwards 520 miles from the center, and twelve-foot high seas covered a diameter of ocean 1,030 miles across. Since records of storm size began in 1988, no tropical storm or hurricane has been larger (though Hurricane Olga of 2001 had a larger 690 mile radius of tropical storm-force winds when it was a subtropical storm near Bermuda.) Sandy has put an colossal volume of ocean water in motion with its widespread and powerful winds, and the hurricane’s massive storm surge is already impacting the coast. A 2′ storm surge has been recorded at numerous locations this morning from Virginia to Connecticut, including a 3′ surge at Virginia’s Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel and Sewells Point at 9 am EDT. Huge, 10 – 15 foot-high battering waves on top of the storm surge have washed over Highway 12 connecting North Carolina’s Outer Banks to the mainland at South Nags Head this morning. The highway is now impassable, and has been closed. The coast guard station on Cape Hatteras, NC, recorded sustained winds of 50 mph, gusting to 61 mph, at 5:53 am EDT this morning. In Delaware, the coastal highway Route 1 between Dewey Beach and Bethany Beach has been closed due to high water. Even though Sandy is a minimal Category 1 hurricane, its storm surge is extremely dangerous, and if you are in a low-lying area that is asked to evacuate, I strongly recommend that you leave.


Figure 1. A fright to behold: morning satellite image of massive Hurricane Sandy.

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