Perhaps the most noteworthy thing about the American Trump-Harris debate on Wednesday morning Australian time was that S&P 500 futures took a dip not long after it commenced.
S&P 500 futures were down -12pts as the debate got underway. By the last ten minutes, they were down -21pts. Gold prices also climbed up to record levels during the debate.
That real-time market reaction reflects, in my view, that this debate will end with no clear winner. The last Trump-Biden debate looked like it could solidify an outcome, that’s why Harris is here now.
This debate isn’t chilling enough to look like it could decide an election. “Clearly,” Kamala chuckled at one point, “I’m not Joe Biden.” It wasn’t clear to me if she was laughing at Trump.
Moments later, at the very end of the debate, the wine spilled over. Both candidates began over-talking one another, and the ABC news hosts. Trump got under her skin for a moment there, but in her defence, he’d been saying the same things for around 90 minutes. What was insulted was her intelligence (here’s my bias: I’d like to think the viewers’ was also.)
Insults, disagreements & ‘remember whens’
The boiled down summary: Trump and Harris said what everybody thought they would. There were some insults, a lot of disagreements about what constitutes reality, and a lot of ‘remember whens.’
Of course, a hundred different viewers would walk away with one hundred different views of this debate (and a hundred different theses for why S&P 500 futures were taking a dip during.)
When it came to the lion’s share of the debate, little of it directly related to markets. Most obvious was energy policy: both Presidents talked big on getting more gas online. Drill, baby, drill.
Fracking friendly
Fracking actually came up quite a lot. Harris used a question about healthcare to wedge a further denial of Trump’s repeated claim she’ll ban fracking – clearly, Democrats see it as important to make it known they’re energy friendly.
Harris even earlier highlighted she had voted in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), Biden’s re-packaged climate change spending legislation which was re-named, arguably, to sound less like that.
Handily, that allowed Harris to point out those laws allowed for more gas drilling and production during the debate. That footnote was absent from discourse during the first version of that legislation – remember the “Green New Deal?”
(To be fair, I Can’t Believe He’s Not Republican Democrat Joe Manchin made sure the energy industry got its word in by constantly blocking the bill at the early stages. He takes more oil and gas donations than anyone on the red side.)
Donald Trump meanwhile said he himself created USA’s modern energy industry and was equally supportive of more oil and gas.
Outside of that, though: no real surprises, no real direction.
Dogs for dinner
Much talk will focus on Trump’s comment immigrants are eating the pets of good Americans – both cats and dogs being eaten up. That’s because it’s the most interesting thing that happened.
Harris introduced herself as a “middle class kid.” Trump spoke of job growth under the Democrats being “bounceback.” He actually spoke of the economy quite a lot in the early parleys of the debate, but didn’t make clear what, exactly, Republicans would do differently once they get into power.
Harris didn’t do much to make clear what the Democrats might do differently, either.