Swooning stocks signal higher likelihood of Trump losing election-Moody's Analytics
by Reuters
Monday, 16 March 2020 10:00 GMT
By Jason Lange
WASHINGTON, March 16 (Reuters) - The U.S. stock market rout triggered by a deadly coronavirus outbreak suggests President Donald Trump is in grave danger of losing the November election, according to a forecasting model by Moody's Analytics, a leading Wall Street research firm.
That's a big change from what the model showed using data from February, when higher stock prices and Trump's steady approval rating pointed to the Republican president coasting to victory with 351 votes in the U.S. Electoral College to 187 votes for a Democratic challenger.
But financial markets have since plunged with the spread of the virus disrupting economic activity around the world and sparking fears of a global recession. A drop in the Standard & Poor's 500 stock index to 2,500 points - roughly Thursday's closing level - would signal enough economic anxiety to cost Trump the election, Bernard Yaros, an economist at Moody's Analytics, said on Friday.
"The S&P 500 would need to be 2,500 or less for Trump to lose," Yaros told Reuters in an email. He did not elaborate on the expected electoral college results in that circumstance.
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