Midterm Elections and a Mideast Flare-Up Collide With an Already Shaky Tape
Dow futures slipped and Apple and Palantir fell hard in premarket trading as Election Day uncertainty, a reported U.S. strike near Iran, and a still-jittery crypto market all landed on the same session.
U.S. voters head to the polls Tuesday in a midterm election that prediction markets see tilting toward a Democratic House, while Wall Street works through one of its busiest earnings weeks of the year and crypto tries to stabilize after a brutal end to October.
What Happened
Monday’s session closed in mixed fashion: the Dow added roughly 214 points (+0.41%), but the S&P 500 slipped 0.51% after being up as much as 1% intraday, and the Nasdaq Composite reversed a 1.4% intraday gain to close down 1.07%, with the Nasdaq-100 falling 1.36% to $681.09. Tuesday’s premarket carried that weakness forward: Dow futures fell, Apple dropped as much as 3.86% premarket on its soft holiday-quarter margin guidance (see FactSheets’ AAPL earnings recap), and Palantir fell 8.42% premarket despite beating Q3 estimates, as investors focused on slowing bookings growth and stretched valuation instead. Commodities moved sharply on geopolitics: gold fell 1.46% to $3,911.80 an ounce and silver dropped 3.91% to $48.90, while WTI crude rose 2.13% to $98.51 a barrel and Brent gained 1.66% to $106.50 after reports of a U.S. strike on an Iranian Revolutionary Guard position on Qeshm Island. Capital.com analyst Daniela Hathorn said the midterms add uncertainty for the dollar and Treasury yields, noting that “elevated Treasury yields are adding to the pressure by making future earnings less valuable in today’s terms.”
Election Odds and Crypto’s Shaky Footing
Prediction markets broadly agree the House is likely to flip Democratic, with Polymarket at 85% and Kalshi at 84%, though estimates vary by source — Decision Desk HQ had put the odds at 76% in mid-October, and the generic-ballot Democratic lead is estimated anywhere from 4 to 9 points depending on the poll aggregator. The Senate is a genuine toss-up, and sources disagree even on direction: Kalshi and Polymarket lean narrowly Republican to hold the chamber, while Decision Desk HQ has leaned Democratic; key battlegrounds include Ohio, Wisconsin and Arizona. Historically, midterm outcomes have mattered less to stocks than the mere fact that an election is over: BlackRock notes the S&P 500 has averaged a 10.4% gain in the six months after a midterm when the president’s party loses Congress, and Capital Group puts the average S&P 500 return at 15.4% in the year following a midterm since 1950. Morgan Stanley argues durable policy themes like trade and regulation matter more to markets than the election result itself. Bitcoin, meanwhile, is trading near $76,500, down about 2.2% over 24 hours and 3.6% over the past week, with support near $76,000 and resistance at $78,500 — still digesting last week’s $643 million spot ETF outflow and the fallout from Binance’s $6.3 billion hack, which is still working through a gradual withdrawal reopening and saw roughly $3.64 billion in net customer outflows on Sunday. Fed December rate-hike odds near 73-74% are also capping crypto’s upside, even as Strategy (MSTR) added 811 BTC (about $65.5 million) to its holdings despite sitting underwater on its average cost basis.
Why It Matters
Today’s vote lands in the middle of one of the year’s heaviest earnings weeks — AMD reports Tuesday after the close (see FactSheets’ AMD earnings preview), with Qualcomm, Amgen, McDonald’s, CVS Health, Uber and ConocoPhillips still to come this week — see the full lineup on FactSheets’ Earnings coverage. With roughly $170 million reportedly spent by the crypto industry around these midterms and market-structure legislation on the line, the election outcome is also a read-through for crypto policy heading into 2027. For ongoing coverage of both threads, see FactSheets’ Crypto coverage, Market Strategies section, and the Stock Fact Sheets hub.
For informational purposes only. Not investment advice. Prediction-market odds, poll aggregates, and cryptocurrency prices are highly volatile and subject to rapid change; figures cited above are as of the time of publication. Always do your own research or consult a licensed financial advisor before making investment decisions.
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