US presidential election 2020: Has the global financial market priced in a ‘blue wave’ on America’s Election Day?

And yet, for some investing veterans, there’s a nagging concern that this view is a little optimistic, that some of the things that have made Biden an attractive candidate for voters craving change could make for a rougher ride in markets.

For one thing, they note, there’s his pledge to roll back the huge tax cuts that President Donald Trump handed corporate America back in 2017, a move that, irrespective of the public-policy merits it may have, at least has the potential to create stress for equities. There’s also the fact that Biden repeatedly says he cares little about what happens to the market. Even if that’s sloganeering and not quite true, it’s hard to believe he cares about it as much as Trump, who at times has seemed maniacally focused on goosing shares higher.

Higher it did go, of course. So high that stock valuations are richer on the eve of next week’s election than they have been in any previous campaign cycle in history. That is perhaps the single biggest thing that worries the pessimists out there, that so much euphoria is baked into prices already – about an end to the pandemic, about the economy’s ability to recover, about a rebound in earnings – that almost any president taking over from Trump would wind up doing something to shatter the balance.

“Biden has been clear his focus is not the stock market, it’s the economy,” said David Bianco, CIO of the Americas at DWS Group. “Inheriting the equity market at these levels is a big challenge to drive it substantially higher.”