I’ve had a busy week, with one of my last ever university projects due Tuesday, so only time for a short update this week.
With the US elections looming ever closer, the last presidential debate was an important event last week. This was only the second debate, out of the normal three, after Trump refused to engage in a virtual debate. With the US truly into their third wave of the pandemic, Trump tried to downplay the virus, while other topics that came up included healthcare, racism, and the economy and taxes. Take a look at the highlights Yahoo! Finance produce- https://youtu.be/PxOc-P8jJaQ. The Financial Times’ Kiran Stacey noted that Trump was much calmer than in the first debate- https://youtu.be/Yoz16UrNiWE. This made him seem more likeable and provided Biden more chances to mess up, but likely did not provide Trump with the boost he needed to overtake Biden in the polls, including the most important poll on November 3rd. TLDR US created a detailed breakdown of what may happen in the election, focusing on the possibility of a blue wave- where the Democrats win the Presidency, the Senate, and the House- which you can see here- https://youtu.be/qmDRqTLmFSg.
Outside of the US, Covid-19 continues to rampage, with cases likely to hit 43 million in the next several hours. Global deaths are currently sitting at 1.15 million, and the 7-day moving average of daily cases is on what looks to be an exponential increase. The US is still on top by cases and deaths, with 8.8 million cases and 230,000 deaths, with India falling behind as cases in the US tick upward.
On the market front, the NZX50 ended the week up, outdoing most other major indices, with the ASX200, S&P500, NASDAQ, Dow Jones, FTSE100, DAX, and STOXX50 indices all down for the week. My personal portfolio also ended the week down, driven by falls in heavyweights MFT and MEL.
