Welcome to the thoughts on the market. I'm Michael Zezes, head of public policy research and municipal strategy for Morgan Stanley.

Along with my colleagues bringing you a variety of perspectives, I'll be talking about the intersection between U.S.

public policy and financial markets. It's Wednesday, October 28th at 1130 a.m. in New York.

Election day is a week away. At this point, our listeners are probably familiar with all the policy

and market implications of various outcomes. What they may not be familiar with is how to

understand the news flow on election night, which might be particularly confusing

this time around.

That's because the record-shattering growth in vote by mail is likely to distort the pattern of vote counting and reporting that we become accustomed to.

In that spirit, we're summarizing our own plan for how to track election night.

For investors, this is all about when markets will conclude it was won, not necessarily when a candidate has conceded,

or when media networks call the winner.

The road to knowing a result on election night likely goes through Florida and North Carolina.

65% of Florida mail-in ballots have been returned, so with 56% of North Carolina ballots.

And both states can already count those votes,

and if stated publicly those counts will be quickly released upon poll closing.

So, both states could return quick results,

and this opens up the possibility of knowing the election

outcome early in the night. For example, President Trump very likely needs to

win Florida. If he appears to have lost he has probably lost the presidency.

Similarly, if the North Carolina Senate race is won by Democrats,

then that's probably an indicator that Democrats have taken control of the Senate by

also winning seats and other close races. Again, networks probably won't call it that early because you'd have slow counting states with enough electoral votes still outstanding, namely Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, but we think markets would bake it in pretty quick.

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