Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Andrew Sheets, Chief Cross Asset

Strategy, along with my colleagues bringing you a variety of perspectives,

I'll be talking about trends across the global investment landscape and how we put those ideas together.

It's Friday, October 16th at 2 p.m. in London.

Well, it's just 18 days until the US election.

Next week, I'll be sitting down with my

colleague Michael Zezes for an in-depth discussion of what we think different

outcomes could mean for the market. But today I wanted to discuss two things. Why

you shouldn't assume that the latest polling is

necessarily reflected in market prices and why the biggest variable for markets

could be a so-called sweep. Let's start with a polling. It's popular to think

of the market as a highly efficient machine

that immediately reflects new information, and so as recent polls have shown a widening lead

for Vice President Joe Biden, it would seem reasonable to assume that the markets have already moved

to fully reflect this.

But I'm not so sure.

My conversations with investors suggest that there's a huge amount of interest in the U.S.

election outcome, but little desire to add or change holdings ahead of the result.

I think a lot of investors still see the outcome of this year's election is uncertain

and at this point feel they don't have to wait very long to know with certainty.

The flow data we see from our trading business reflects a very

similar pattern. In short, don't assume that markets are reflecting the latest poll numbers and

...