Donald Trump represents an unknown variable that tends to provoke anxiety among investors, analyst Chris Krueger said Monday.
"What Wall Street is looking for here is probably a [Hillary Clinton] win with divided government," the Washington research policy analyst at Cowen and Co. told CNBC's "Squawk on the Street."
Krueger said Trump's proposed tariffs are among the most controversial issues with investors. If the Republican presidential nominee were to win the election, there would be little stopping him from immediately enacting sweeping reform, he added.
"The market doesn't like uncertainty. With Trump, that is what you get almost by definition," Krueger said. "If he wants to do the 45 percent tariff on Chinese imports on Day One, that's something he can do."
Ronald O'Hanley, CEO of State Street Global Advisors, echoed the point that much of investor sentiment is driven by certainty in a given area. Coming out of Sunday's debate, he said the outcome of the election may have inched closer toward certainty.
"I don't think it's necessarily a value judgment on either candidate, more so that with some certainty, people can make some investment decisions," O'Hanley told "Squawk on the Street" in a separate interview Monday.
Trump's inability to deliver any knockout blows to Clinton in Sunday's debate is also fueling the probability of a victory for the Democratic presidential nominee, Citi's chief U.S. equity strategist, Tobias Levkovich, said.
Levkovich, in part, tied good performance in the energy sector to the Clinton campaign gaining traction coming out of the debate.
He said Monday on "Squawk on the Street" that the likelihood of a Clinton win brings environmental concerns into the mix, casting a "cloud" over U.S. shale activity. This could in turn "propel and prop up oil prices," which Levkovich said would benefit the energy sector in terms of stock price performance.