What the election means for your finances

Welcome back, everyone. Good to have you here with us on Fox 5 News Live. Okay, so Democrats had a big night in the midterm elections, as we all know. And now Wall Street is looking at the results of that and reacting. So let's find out how that's impacting your finances. We have Justin Farmer with Forest City Private Wealth joining us now. Justin, it's good to see you. Hey, always good to be here with you. Thank you. We got a lot going on. So investors have had an opportunity to kind of digest the results, I think it's safe to say. So what are you seeing in the markets today? Well, yesterday was fun. Yesterday was a great day to get home and look how your accounts looked and they were great. Today, not. So much today is pretty dramatic. The selling you are seeing the Dow down over a thousand points. The NASDAQ is getting blistered. The tech heavy NASDAQ is down more than 4% as we come on the air here. So you're saying, wait a minute, what's going on? The markets are trying to figure out what the midterm elections mean, both in the very short term, but also policy wise. And we can certainly get into that, Elise. But here's the thing. What we do know statistically. Every time since 1950. I'm talking about without exception. Every time since 1950, the S&P 500 has been higher 12 months after the midterm election. OK, I'll say it again. OK. History has shown us without fail that typically and without fail that your stocks will go up historically. I can't see the future, of course, but historically stocks have always been higher the 12 months. After the election, that's looking at the S&P 500, which is a good indicator of the overall market. Okay, there you have it. So history is on our side. Right. Will it happen this time? I don't know. Don't know, but that's what we've seen historically. That's right. That's certainly good to know. So we know that we have a Republican president, of course, Democrats controlling both the House and Senate. So you would imagine that creates a lot of conflict in Washington, Justin. There's a phrase on Wall Street that gridlock is actually good, and here's why. Markets love predictability. When you have one party controlling... Following the branches of government, big sweeping legislative changes can occur and that makes markets jittery because they don't know if it's going to benefit, be to the benefit of stocks and certain businesses, et cetera. When you have gridlock, when you, in this case, a Republican president and a Democratic now controlled Congress soon, then what that does is it's very hard to pass sweeping legislation because a president, regardless of whether the president is Republican with a Democratic Congress or vice versa, a Democratic president with a Republican controlled Congress. When you have a bit of gridlock or quagmire in Washington, when it comes to the ability to pass legislation, that typically, again, speaking historically, that benefits the markets because markets like predictability, then businesses can operate without all of a sudden getting some unexpected headwind. Okay. All right. That makes sense. That makes sense. Okay. No, that makes sense. It makes me think too many changes, are there policy changes that we should expect and maybe not expect? Well, that's what I think we're seeing today with this big sell-off. Especially in AI-centric or AI-related stocks. There's a lot of concern in the public, and certainly on Wall Street, that as Democrats go into office, legislatively anyway, as they take office, they're going to go after AI companies. They're going to go after these data centers. But here's what I would say. Look at that very cautiously, and here's why. For the big, bad data centers that a lot of Democrats ran on, the truth of it is they employ a lot of people. And they've actually been quite beneficial for a lot of rural areas across the United States. And the unions, in many cases, have benefited from the constructions and the operation of these data centers. So the notion that there's two things that can happen, at least in politics, as you know. There's what you run on to win, and then there's how you govern. So I don't think it's plausible that... That the United States is going to somehow turn its back on data centers in general. Or I don't think it's plausible that the United States government is going to suddenly try to slow down the AI race. That's not how it's going to happen. It's just going to happen with a different narrative. Therefore, when the market gets kicked in the teeth like it is today and you're feeling jittery, that's actually the time you want to buy. It's like everything just went on sale. If you walked into a Target and everything was on sale, that's the day to shop at Target. That's the one. Not on the 19th of December when everything is at its peak price. What a great way to do it. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And one more question, Brandon. You're good at a lot of things. One of them is bringing this home. What should the biggest takeaway be for our viewers right now with their finances? If you're young. Today is actually a friend for you. Any day that you get a big dip, if you're relatively young, and I consider anything under 60 young, meaning if you're not too close to retirement, okay? If retirement's not knocking on your door, then days like today, or when you want to take any dry powder you have, any cash sitting on the sidelines, deploy that capital. The market's... Giving you a 4% gift today doesn't mean it's going to be higher by 4% tomorrow. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is, over time, the U.S. stock market's undefeated. There you have it. All right. Helpful stuff as always, Justin Farmer, Forest City Private Wealth with us. We could go on and on and on. And behind the scenes, I want to know what clients are asking you right now about the situation and just kind of. I'll give you some buys. I just I shouldn't do that on TV. I don't like getting specific. I'll give her some names and then you ask her. All right. There we have it. Justin Farmer, as always. It's so good to see you. Thank you. Good to see you. Good to see you. We appreciate it.