Quoted from Elvishasleft:Welp.. never a good sign when the president builds a retaining wall around the white house.
I am going to step up to the political line but not go over it with this point. DC has the potential to be a flashpoint tonight, which could hurt markets. Sorry for the length of this but I encourage you to read.
ShutDownDC is a fairly active group that is planning 3 days of protests here as close to the White House as possible. I have no problems with this, although they are using some fear mongering language. From their website:
"Votes will still be coming in, so this will (probably) not be the time we need to create disruption to stop a coup - yet. But we’ll be in a good place to respond to whatever might happen."
What I do have an issue with is the map that they published that doxxes Trump campaign donors and staff members. Here is there publicly available ArcGIS map with their plans for 3 days of protests. You can click on that below. This crosses a line in my opinion, when you allow people to target specific people. I feel the same way when the right doxxes the left, for what it is worth.
Regardless of where you sit on the political spectrum, civil political protests is an underpinning of our country. However, I am concerned that actions of this group and others similar are doing things to provoke negative reactions from opponents. It goes from being "I hate the current President and want to voice my disdain" to being that kid in school that would get in your face and say that I am not touching you. When you go too far, you are almost inviting a response, which I guess they are. DC businesses are boarded up right now, which is a crying shame on a day that normally signifies a peaceful transfer of power.
My fear is that you get opposition groups or 3rd party actors of all political stripes looking to cause confrontation or take advantage of a situation. In this case, everybody loses with the exception of troublemakers.
As you can see from their calendar of events, multiple days of activities are planned. We all know due to individual states and their timeframes for counts, the current raft of lawsuits already poised to go from both the left and the right, and the spector of recounts, we could have several days of unrests. Maybe up to 10 days or so. As an American, these things weigh on me greatly. As a stock investor, the spread of these types of events, the duration, and the strength of them could impact the markets. I would watch the news closely and be selective in my market moves at this point.
At the end of the day, I am hoping cooler heads prevail.
Links:
https://www.shutdowndc.org/calendar/event-five-tfgmt
https://a99gis.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=c763c74243604abc822c0bd113082b4b