Dow Jones, S&P 500 and Nasdaq are rising as Wall Street braces for the election results

Shares of Palantir (PLTR) rose 22% after the company’s third-quarter profits beat Wall Street expectations due to a spike in U.S. Defense Department spending on its artificial intelligence technology.

Ryan Taylor, Palantir’s chief revenue and legal officer, said the company’s U.S. government business saw its “strongest sequential growth in 15 quarters, largely driven by our DoD [Department of Defense] business growth of 21% quarter-on-quarter.”

Global government spending on Palantir’s products, mainly from the US, rose 40% year-over-year to $408 million in the third quarter, accounting for 56% of the company’s total revenue for the period. This was higher than the $379 million expected for the segment, according to Bloomberg consensus estimates.

Overall, the company reported adjusted earnings per share of $0.10 for the quarter, a penny above expectations, and revenue of $725.5 million, which exceeded the $703.7 million expected by Wall Street analysts was expected.

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Shares of Trump Media & Technology Group (DJT) soared more than 10% higher in early trading on Tuesday, extending double-digit gains to start the week, as shares brace for more volatility as we head into Election Day the US is underway.

The stock suffered its biggest percentage drop last week, closing about 20% lower to end the five-day period on Friday, shaving about $4 billion off its market cap. Shares are still more than double from their September lows.

The recovery in stocks comes as investors await the election of the next president: Donald Trump or Kamala Harris.

Before the recent volatility, shares in the company, home to the Republican candidate’s social media platform Truth Social, had been steadily rising as both domestic and foreign betting markets shifted in favor of a Trump victory.

Prediction sites such as Polymarket, PredictIt and Kalshi all showed that Trump’s presidential chances are higher than those of Democratic candidate and current Vice President Kamala Harris. That lead narrowed significantly this weekend, however, when new polls showed Harris overtaking Trump in Iowa, which has historically voted Republican.

And as betting markets tighten, national polls show both candidates in a virtually deadlocked race. Opinion polls in key states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, which will likely determine the fate of the election, also show razor-thin margins.

Here’s what the betting markets and election forecasters are saying as the 2024 campaign comes to a close.

Political betting app Kalshi recently became the first place where Americans could legally bet on the 2024 election — and the bets poured in.

Heading into Election Day, the site pegged Trump’s chances at 57%, which was akin to “a very slightly biased coin flip,” Kalshi co-founder Tarek Mansour said in a Yahoo Finance appearance Monday.

A compilation of other betting markets from RealClearPolling, which includes other popular sites open to foreign gamblers from Polymaket to Smarkets, puts the odds of a Trump win at 59.2% to 39.3%. Those odds mean that Harris would win almost four games if the election were held ten times.

As for the poll-based election models, they predicted a tighter race.

Nate Silver’s Silver Bulletin model was last updated on November 5 at noon ET and found near-exact parity in the Electoral College probability, with Harris winning 50% of the time to 49.6% for Trump.

Silver’s final run included 80,000 simulations, with Harris winning 40,012, he wrote.

538.com’s election model was another flop. It turned out that Harris won 50 out of 100 simulations. Trump won 49 times out of 100, with a less than 1 in 100 chance that there would be no Electoral College winner.

The Economist magazine’s final analysis showed a slight Harris lead, with the vice president winning 56 of 100 hypothetical contests.

U.S. stocks opened mostly higher on Tuesday as Election Day got underway. The markets are waiting when it comes to who will end up in the White House: Kamala Harris or Donald Trump.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) led the gains, up 0.5%, while the benchmark S&P 500 (^GSPC) rose about 0.3%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) opened just above the flatline after a losing day for stocks.

Election day has arrived.

And with it all the typical chatter about the outcomes for the country, the world and the markets. Amid the heavy news flow, Truist co-chief investment officer Keith Lerner (who will appear on the Opening Bid podcast tomorrow at 8 a.m. ET with his post-election analysis) dropped the helpful chart below.

I think it’s a good reminder that regardless of the outcome of the presidential election, it has paid dividends over time as a stock investor.