Hedge Fund Strategist Warns Election Season May Sow Volatility

(Bloomberg) --

Politics has become one of the most-important drivers in markets and this year’s U.S. presidential election is shaping up to be the main focus of traders and investors in all asset classes. Naufal Sanaullah, chief macro strategist at hedge fund EIA All Weather Alpha Partners, joins this week’s “What Goes Up” podcast to discuss how he’s thinking about the market implications of the race.

Some highlights of the conversation: 

“I think whether President Trump is reelected or not, whoever's on the losing side will, in different ways and in different magnitudes, have some sort of feeling of contesting the election. And if it does end up being a lame-duck period, I think it's an even bigger political risk because there's a lot of things that can be done, especially on the geopolitical front. That might not be, you know, the typical normal handover period during the lame duck period between election and inauguration.”

“If we get this well-timed fiscal package or a well-timed vaccine headline, then I'm sure folks will start recalibrating the electoral odds of President Trump as well as the GOP in the Senate. And if that were to occur, then suddenly a lot of things are changing. Do we get a President Trump and a Democratic Senate? Do we get a blue sweep? Do we get a red sweep? The point being there that the distribution of probabilistic outcomes widens. We have more outcomes that are within the range of plausible. And in that scenario, that's potential for higher volatility. There's more scenarios that need to be considered.”

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