The Week Ahead: America Votes Tuesday. Wall Street Counts Its Ballots Friday.

Tuesday is Election Day. You know this because your mailbox has been yelling at you since Labor Day.

Here's the part the yard signs skip. Wall Street is counting four ballots this week, and only one has candidates. Big Tech's report cards start Monday. The midterms land Tuesday. The Iran question could land Wednesday. And Friday's jobs report tells the Fed what to do about your car loan.

Last week's ugly Friday is covered in Saturday's Week In Review. This week, everybody gets a sticker. Nobody gets a result until Friday.

Everything with a date. Times are Central, and yes, the clocks changed Sunday. Forecasts come from the EODHD economic calendar unless noted. If it's not on this table, it's background noise.

The market is betting on the result. What it really wants is for the result to be over.

Polls close Tuesday night, and the betting crowd thinks it already knows the story. Polymarket had Democrats at 94.5% for the House and 72.5% for the Senate as of Sunday morning, with a sweep of both at 70.5%. Kalshi, another betting site, had the sweep near 70% on Saturday. A 70% favorite still loses three times out of ten, as anyone who has ever bet on their hometown team can confirm from the couch.

We don't do politics here. We do your 401(k), and it doesn't vote. Historically, it also hasn't cared much. Since 1874, the S&P 500 has averaged about a 14% gain in the 12 months after a midterm and finished higher in 32 of 38 tries, per a Motley Fool study. U.S. Bank, counting from 1929, gets 12.4%. Different scorekeepers, same point. Stocks mostly enjoy the part where the phone calls stop.

The one spot where the vote touches the current market fight is AI. Previews this week say a Democratic sweep could bring more scrutiny of data centers. That's a new headache for an industry already getting asked where all the cash went.

What could go wrong: a razor-close Senate race that takes days or weeks to settle. Markets can handle either team. What they hate is a long night that turns into a long month.

Apple won the crown by falling less. Now the new CEO has to explain the memory bill.

Friday was ugly. The S&P 500 fell 1.8% and the Nasdaq 2.9%, both their worst day since June 5, with Intel lying at the bottom of the stairs. Investors now want a recount of the whole AI spending story, and the next batch of ballots opens this week.

Apple goes first, Monday after the market closes. Wall Street wants about $1.98 to $1.99 a share in profit on around $113 billion in sales. The stock is up about 27% this year, and Apple passed Nvidia as the world's most valuable company on Friday, $5.03 trillion to $4.93 trillion (Bloomberg). Nice crown. It's a little heavy. Apple told investors to expect profit per dollar of sales, called gross margin, of 47% to 48% this quarter, down from 50.1% the quarter before, partly because memory chips cost a fortune now. So Ternus's first call as CEO comes down to one awkward question: can you sell a phone without the phone's parts eating the profit?

Palantir, the data software company, reports the same evening. Forecasts sit near 41 cents a share on $2.18 billion in sales, per MarketBeat. The stock is up only about 4% this year, which, for Palantir, counts as a nap.

AMD is up Tuesday night, while everyone else watches a map turn colors. Forecast: about $1.94 a share on $13.1 billion in sales. The stock is up about 136% this year even after Friday's 10.9% drop. That's a lot of voters to keep happy. Qualcomm and Arm follow Wednesday night. Arm is up 88% on the year. Qualcomm is down about 4%, after losing 11% on Friday alone.

Then the regular-people checkup: McDonald's and Uber Wednesday morning, Airbnb Thursday night. If you want to know whether anyone can still afford a Big Mac and a ride home, that's your polling data.

What could go wrong: Apple's margin comes in light and AMD disappoints while the market is distracted. Then Friday's "one bad day" starts looking like a trend.

Friday's jobs report is the next big test for a December rate hike.

Here's the setup. The Fed held its key rate at 3.75% to 4.00% last week, but two officials wanted to raise it on the spot. Betting on a quarter-point hike at the Dec. 8-9 meeting sits around 70%: CME FedWatch, which reads the odds from futures trades, was near 70% Friday, and Polymarket was at 70.5% Sunday morning.

That's odd math for such a sleepy job market. September added just 29,000 jobs. Forecasters see October at about 55,000 (FactSet) to 65,000 (the EODHD calendar), and a few are as low as 40,000. Unemployment is expected to hold at 4.2%. Pay is forecast up 0.3% month over month and 3.0% year over year. An economy that keeps prices hot with hardly any hiring is a strange animal. It's like a restaurant with a two-hour wait and one cook.

The week builds toward Friday in small doses. Job openings come out Tuesday, ADP's private estimate Wednesday, and jobless claims Thursday, still near very low levels at 194,000 last week. Then Fed officials start talking. Cleveland's Beth Hammack, who voted for a hike last week, speaks Thursday morning. Dallas's Lorie Logan, who also voted for a hike, speaks that evening.

Thursday's mortgage rate from Freddie Mac starts at 7.24%. The 10-year Treasury rate, which steers it, ended last week at 4.94%. Those dipped partly because scared money fled tech for government bonds. That's a discount, not a gift.

What could go wrong: a strong number with strong pay locks in December, and the rates on your car loan and credit card stay stuck. A weak number sounds like relief, but it also signals the economy is losing steam while oil stays expensive.

Ranked by how much it can actually move your money this week, not by how loud the headline is.

1. Iran and the Strait of Hormuz. This is the fourth ballot, and nobody knows when it gets counted. MS NOW reported that three senior Gulf officials say Washington warned allies of short, intense strikes as early as Wednesday, Nov. 4. Rubio said Saturday that Trump "hasn't made a decision." Trump said the US is "not in that much of a hurry." Iranian negotiators are in Doha with Qatari mediators. A Qatari newspaper reported a breakthrough; a US official told the Times of Israel there wasn't one, and Iran's foreign minister says Tehran sees no need to meet the Americans "at present." Even the strait itself is in dispute. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says traffic is near prewar levels "minus Iranian barrels," while Iran's security chief says it stays closed until Iran's demands are met. If real talks open, oil can drop fast. If strikes come, expect it to jump first and explain later.

2. Oil's fake drop. Brent crude, the global price, closed its expiring December contract at $117.64 a barrel on Friday. The next contract in line closed at $113.43, and US crude finished at $104.12. So Monday's headline may look like a $4 drop. It isn't. The label changed. OPEC+, the big oil producers' club, kept December output targets steady on Sunday, which matters less than usual because the bigger issue is getting oil out of the Gulf. Their real meeting is Nov. 29.

3. Two central banks raising rates. The Bank of England is expected to raise its rate to 4.00% from 3.75% on Thursday, its first hike since 2023. In a Reuters poll last month, 54 of 63 economists expected it. Australia is expected to raise its own to 4.85% from 4.60% Monday night, with futures traders at about 81%. When rates rise worldwide, money gets pricier for everybody, including the US government.

4. Uncle Sam's borrowing plan. The Treasury says how much it plans to borrow on Monday and how it'll do it on Wednesday morning. It's the least exciting event on this list, and bond traders still watch it the way your dog watches a dropped sandwich. More long-term borrowing tends to push up the rates that steer mortgages.

Friday, 7:30 AM CT. The October jobs report.

Tuesday gets the wall-to-wall coverage. Friday decides what borrowing costs.

If jobs come in well above 65,000 and pay runs hot, December's hike moves from "likely" toward "done." Rates stay high, and the stocks that got hurt last week don't get much relief.

If jobs come in near or under 40,000 and unemployment ticks up, December gets less certain, and rates may ease. But stocks might not throw a party, since the good news would be that the economy is slowing.

If it lands right around forecast, nothing changes, and everyone goes back to staring at the Strait of Hormuz.

The honest posture: don't be a hero before the count. Five big events in five days is not the week to make a dramatic move in your retirement account. Let the ballots come in.

Four ballots. One has candidates. One has Apple's memory bill. One has a strait that two governments can't agree is open. And one comes out at 7:30 Friday morning, when the people who stayed up for all the others are finally asleep.

Go vote. Take the sticker. Eat something at the bake sale.

Then leave your portfolio alone. The count takes all week, and nobody's ever gotten rich by yelling at the poll workers.

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DISCLAIMER: Tracking the Trade is a newsletter, not an investment adviser, a bank, or a registered poll worker. Everything here is for information and entertainment, mostly the second one. We aren't licensed to tell you what to buy, and we won't tell you how to vote. Prices and data were accurate when pulled and may have changed before you read this. Do your own research, and never take financial advice from a newsletter that just compared your 401(k) to a sticker.