How will US election result impact markets?

US

Tom Stevenson, investment director at Fidelity Worldwide Investment, considers the impact the election result will have on markets.

In a letter to John F Kennedy in 1962, JK Galbraith derided politics as the art of ‘choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable’. This November, as the American public heads to the polls to determine the country’s next president, the choice looks similarly unappealing. The looming ‘fiscal cliff’, as well as the threat of increased inflation and continuing sluggish growth will have to be confronted by whoever wins, and the markets are watching closely. So, in an environment where the only economic certainty is uncertainty and fragility, do markets influence elections, or do electi...