Markets were up Monday as Hillary Clinton maintained her lead over Donald Trump, but one strategist believes that a Trump victory could signal a buying opportunity for investors.
Like many strategists and traders, ACG Analytics managing director Larry McDonald predicts that stocks will drop if Donald Trump were to win the election, with McDonald believing that the drop could be as much as 10 percent should the Republican candidate beat Hillary Clinton. However, McDonald doesn't think that the outlook would be as bleak in the coming months as many suspect.
"After a stimulus plan and the first or second quarter of next year, markets should normalize, but it should be a vicious, colossal risk-off," said McDonald Friday on CNBC's "Trading Nation."
"I think it's going to bring in recession risk, but you're going to buy stocks as you kind of go into a recession," he added. "It won't be a long recession."
In other words, McDonald expects that the market would recover in the months following a Trump victory, meaning that investors may want to buy stocks should Trump be elected to prepare for a rebound in the markets.
While Trump has closed the gap between him and Clinton, the latter still leads in the polls ahead of Tuesday's election. But even if Trump were to defy the odds and emerge the victor, S&P Global chief investment officer Erin Gibbs thinks the market will recover sooner than many may think.
Gibbs' prediction is based on the numbers from three previous elections when an "upset" occurred. In the case of Truman in 1948 and Bush in 2000, the market was already down a week going into the election. But Gibbs also emphasizes that in both cases markets recovered by December, and this time could be no different.
"Since we are in a downturn, it could make the markets more volatile, make it go down one month after, but we tend to see some recovery in December," she said. "If the expected winner wins, we expect the market to stay on pace."
Gibbs isn't the only one who is not worried about who the next president may be. Nick Colas of Convergex in a note on Monday urged investors not to "sell everything" given that rates are still low and "in the end stock prices are set by future earnings and interest rates."
Matt Maley, equity strategist at Miller Tabak, also maintains that the markets and the economy could do better than some may fear.
"No matter who wins, the sun will rise on Wednesday, people will go to work and the markets will open," wrote Maley in a Monday morning note. "In other words, no matter what the biggest detractors of both candidates try to say, the markets & the economy will not collapse this month (or even next month)."
