Dow futures pare losses, down about 500; safety breakers stop Nasdaq, S&P 500 spirals
Dow futures briefly dropped more than 800 points and bonds rallied as markets feared Donald Trump could pull off an upset and take the White House. Dow futures were trading about 500 points lower as of 2:14 a.m., ET.
Just before midnight ET, S&P 500 futures and Nasdaq 100 futures plunged more than 5 percent.
That was just above levels identified as "limit down" by the CME, which confirmed to CNBC that S&P and Nasdaq futures can trade above but not below those prices until 9:30 a.m., ET, when the Wednesday U.S. trading session begins.
You mean like Brexit where the markets plunged and bounced right back?
Since you know nothing about investing or Wall Street, I'll give you the highlights.
Finance is a simple principle. You expect the risk adjusted rate of return for your investment.
Note people think risk means downside. Actually it just means volatility or a higher standard deviation in the expected returns.
So the market can go down for two reasons. The expected return goes down, or the volatility goes up.
Wall Street reads the media and knew Hillary was supposed to win. When the returns started coming in showing the exit polls were wrong and Trump was going to win, they had to assess what that means. It was uncertainty.
That uncertainty in financials is equivalent to risk.
That's why when things like Brexit or Trump winning that weren't expected the market typically drops. Then as they assess what it means to them and the uncertainty/risk goes down it bounces right back.
This was simple, clear and intuitive and you'd learn it in any finance class Tell the truth, you didn't get any of it, did you?