WSJ : What Are the Deadlines for Counting Mail-In Votes and Absentee Ballots?

What Are the Deadlines for Counting Mail-In Votes and Absentee Ballots?
Surge in mailed ballots means the vote count may well stretch past Election Day

Q: What are the deadlines for counting mail-in votes and absentee ballots?
A: Election officials say the country should be prepared not to know who won the White House on Election Day, citing a surge of mail-in ballots that some states will need extra time to count.

Even in a normal year, the results announced on election night are considered unofficial by election authorities. States generally conduct a certification process to verify the final tally, which can take weeks. That is potentially more significant in a close race.

“We have to prepare for the very strong probability that an election unlike any other we’ve ever had might take a little longer to accurately count with integrity,” David Becker, executive director and founder of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research, previously told the Journal. “More time being taken to report results is not an indication of a problem.”

Election results are formalized through two processes called canvassing and certification. Canvassing refers to the act of states verifying that each ballot was counted correctly. Certification is the formal process of making election results official.

Certification deadlines vary state-by-state. Six states—Delaware, Louisiana, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Vermont and Virginia—have set certification deadlines within one week of the election.

Twenty-six states and the District of Columbia have certification deadlines between Nov. 10 and Nov. 30. This group includes key swing states like Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Fourteen states have certification deadlines that stretch into December. This group includes Wisconsin, a key swing state for the 2020 election, and states with larger populations such as New York, Texas and California.

Four states—Hawaii, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Tennessee—don’t have certification deadlines outlined in their state statutes.

One little-known but important date to keep in mind is the safe harbor deadline, which is set for Dec. 8 this year. The safe harbor deadline is the date by which each state must resolve any contests or controversies about election results in order to guarantee approval by Congress. During the 2000 election between George W. Bush and Al Gore, the safe harbor deadline played a key role in determining when Florida had to report its results, which ultimately swung the election in favor of George W. Bush. A deeply divided Supreme Court at the time voted 5-4 to deny an extension of the safe harbor deadline for Florida’s recount.

Under federal law, in what is known as the Electoral College process, the 538 electors who have been selected by each state must cast their votes on Dec. 14 for president and vice president.

FT : Boohoo becomes a battleground for investors

Boohoo becomes a battleground for investors
Fast-fashion ecommerce group draws support and criticism as it fights governance and supply chain concerns

Boohoo is a battleground stock. Since its IPO in 2014, the £3.5bn fast-fashion ecommerce company has been the subject of enthusiasm and scepticism in equal measure.

The narratives being spun by both sides of the trade are pretty easy to follow. Bulls rightly point to Boohoo’s industry-leading profit margins, double-digit revenue growth and effective social media presence as signs the business is executing its business plans well. Bears, meanwhile, have long raised questions on its loose governance structure and cite concerns over some of its Leicester-based suppliers whose working conditions would make the Victorians squeamish.

Like many contested stocks of the past decade, bulls have been the ones rewarded, with the share price rising fourfold from its public debut through to last year’s end. Since the New Year, however, it’s been a different story.

Following reports by The Sunday Times in July of serious inadequacies in parts of its supply chain, the stock has whipsawed as Boohoo sought to alleviate concerns that it was profiteering from cheaper-than-legal labour.

Cut to September, and the publication of an independent report commissioned by Boohoo seemingly removed some pressure. Although lawyer Alison Levitt and her team found widespread evidence of unacceptable conditions at some of its suppliers, the document said the company did not intentionally profit from or cultivate them. A company pledge to clean up its act followed, helping the stock rise 20 per cent to £3.90, just below its all-time high.

Boohoo investors hoping for a period out of the media ring, however, would have been dismayed by news last weekend that its auditor, PwC, has resigned and the National Crime Agency is investigating one of its suppliers on suspicions of money laundering and VAT fraud. Gravity took hold of the stock and by Tuesday it had collapsed by almost a third, before bouncing a tad after management bought the dip the next morning.

Analysts are nonplussed by the noise. Peel Hunt dismissed the developments as “nothing new to see here”. Number crunchers at Mirabaud — the team that infamously set a price target of zero on Wirecard — said “this is one dip that we think is an opportunity”. It is a song sung in unison, it seems, with 15 out of 21 analysts still positive on the stock.

Judging whether this chorus is slipping out of tune is tricky. Most of this year’s events will not have been much of a surprise to followers of the fast-fashion industry. Over a decade ago, Channel 4 found evidence of grossly underpaid workers in Leicester and, in 2018, the Financial Times pulled the curtain back on the city’s “dark factories”.

So questions over whether woke millennials will eventually vote with their wallets are easily swotted away by the fact that, so far at least, they have not.

Governance concerns, however, are harder to dismiss. Some investors may point out that, like its supply-chain problems, many of the governance issues at Boohoo — such as large director bonuses linked to share price performance and related party transactions — are well documented and, therefore, irrelevant.

But PwC’s resignation has clearly intensified investor jitters, and the reported reticence of its big-name competitors to bid for the contract should give holders further food for thought: not least because weak oversight can often manifest itself in ways that remain invisible until the last moment, as investors in stricken former FTSE 100 member NMC Health found out earlier in the year before it fell into administration.

Boohoo, to its credit, has promised widespread governance reforms in the post-Levitt era, including the appointment of two more independent directors to the board and the formation of a new supply-chain compliance committee. With so much change happening so quickly, however, there is some scepticism over whether it will go smoothly.

On fundamentals alone, it is easy to see why Boohoo’s big investors, such as Jupiter Asset Management and Baillie Gifford, are sticking with the company. Boohoo is trading on a valuation of 33 times 2021’s estimated earnings. That might not seem cheap at first glance but profits rose 51 per cent in the first half of the year. And the valuation is a discount to rival Asos, which trades on a multiple of 42 times.

But with so many question marks hanging over the business, it is hard to argue this discount is not justified. Cheap companies, as they say, are often cheap for a reason.

FR : Jack Ma rails against global financial regulations ahead of $30bn Ant IPO

Jack Ma rails against global financial regulations ahead of $30bn Ant IPO
Basel rules were designed in era that is less relevant to China’s future, Alibaba founder says

Alibaba founder Jack Ma blasted international financial regulations and said China needed to chart its own path, days before Ant Group launches the world’s biggest initial public offering.

“The Basel Accords are like an old people’s club . . . we can’t use yesterday’s methods to regulate the future,” Mr Ma said at a conference in Shanghai on the weekend, referring to the international banking supervision framework.

Mr Ma said the challenges the rules were designed to resolve were not relevant to China’s phase of development. “Many of the world’s problems” stem from “only talking about risk control, not talking about development, not thinking about young people’s or developing countries’ opportunities”, he said.

The dual listing in Hong Kong and Shanghai of Ant, the financial services group, is expected to raise at least $30bn, in an IPO that would top the previous record of $25.6bn raised in 2019 by Saudi Aramco, the state-owned oil company.

The Chinese group is controlled by Mr Ma, who has kept a low profile since retiring from his position as chair of Alibaba in 2019. Ant has been valued at $318bn by some analysts and Mr Ma has pledged to reduce his direct and indirect stakes to 8.8 per cent.

Ant runs Alipay, one of China’s two biggest mobile payment platforms, as well as a host of fintech services including the Sesame Credit personal credit rating system.

China has roughly 460m people without formal bank credit histories. Small and medium-sized enterprises have struggled to obtain loans from the traditional banking sector, which is dominated by big state-owned banks that like to lend to large companies and state-owned groups.

Mr Ma said the financial system should rely less on big banks and more of an ecosystem of “lakes, ponds, streams and brooks” that carry capital into the different corners of economy.

He also urged moving away from a “pawnshop” mentality of banks taking collateral for loans and towards credit-ratings based on big data. The Basel Accords require banks internationally to keep sufficient collateral to absorb potential losses.

Ant has expanded its Sesame Credit scheme to give users with good scores collateral-free access to everything from shared apartments to umbrella rental.

But while Ant’s platforms encompass a diverse range of consumer behaviours that provide useful data, its own experts have questioned the success of Sesame Credit for predicting loan repayment rates. The company has mostly stuck to traditional banking data for making lending decisions.

The People’s Bank of China, the central bank, has also run into problems when trying to set up its own nationwide alternative credit-scoring company called Baihang. The biggest sources of fintech user data — Tencent and Ant Group — have previously refused to share it with Baihang.

On Sunday, local media reported that Ant Group had bought a Rmb2.7bn plot of land to build another office building in Hangzhou, the city where the group is headquartered. The purchase is seen as evidence of Ant’s planned expansion as well as its deep pockets: the company earned Rmb18bn ($2.6bn) in profits last year.

>>> Barron’s Weekend Summary

Barron’s Weekend Summary: KO’s global reach leaves it will positioned for a rebound next year when the pandemic resides; Investors remain unfazed by Washington’s regulatory assault on tech giants

* Cover Story: Positive on KO: The beverage giant has taken a hit from the pandemic, but with operations in more than 200 countries, it has global reach like no other consumer company, and it benefits from rising living standards around the world while providing exposure to a weaker dollar because it generates about 75 percent of its profits outside the US; When the pandemic resides and the world starts to return to normal in 2021, Coca-Cola is well poised for a rebound.

* Tech Trader: Positive on AAPL, AMZN, FB, GOOGL: Tech giants face a growing regulatory assault from Washington related to antitrust, with a federal lawsuit against Google the latest push, yet investors seem indifferent to the growing assault, either because they believe it’s merely chest-thumping, or because they think a forced breakup of tech giants would create value.

* Trader: Fundamentals suggest that bond yields should be much higher—Ed Yardeni, chief investment strategist at Yardeni Research, argues that the current copper-to-gold ratio implies a 10-year Treasury yield near 1.61 percent; Positive on SFM: Only a few of the analysts that cover the stock, which has dropped during the pandemic, are bullish, but there are trends working in the company’s favor, such as the ongoing eat-at-home and healthy eating trends.

* Interview: Cathie Wood, an economic at ARK Investment Management—which is solely focused on disruptive innovation—is bullish on TSLA and Bitcoin; She discusses innovation and destruction in a post-Covid world, a new golden age for healthcare, technologies such as robotics and 3D printing, and favorite stocks, including NKLA.

* Profile: David Wallack, manager of the $11.5B T. Rowe Price Mid-Cap Value fund, which until recently had been closed to new investors, doesn’t try to predict the future—instead, he runs base-case scenarios and models the upside and downside, narrowing selections by which opportunities offer the best reward for the risk.

* Features: 1) Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s critics say his plan to raise taxes on the wealthy and on corporations would lead to economic devastation, but the proposals—when analyzed independently of spending and economic policies—would only generate negative economic growth of 0.16 to 1.62 percent over the next 10 years; related story breaks down how much various groups would pay under Biden’s and Trump’s tax plans, focusing on top earners, middle-income earners, investors, and benefactors and heirs; 2) Positive on BABA, China Tourism Group Duty Free, HTHT, Innovent Biologics, Jiangsu Hengrui Medicine, Magazine Luiza, MELI, Nari Technology, Reliance Industries: After underperforming the US for a decade, emerging markets face an improving backdrop—more fiscal stimulus and a global recovery from the pandemic, and a weaker dollar that makes foreign assets cheaper for US investors, should help emerging market stocks rival US tech giants; 3) Positive: CHCT, DOC, HR: With health services returning to normal, demand for medical real estate is holding steady—landlords say rents are being collected at nearly 100 percent of pre-Covid-19 levels, acquisitions are ramping up, and interest rates remain low, all of which should fuel dividend and asset growth.

* European Trader: Positive on HelloFresh: Shares of the German meal-kit company are up as it benefits from consumers seeking to cook at home during lockdowns, and with the meal-kit market set to grow by 15 percent in the coming years, the stock has more upside as the company increases capacity in the US.

* Emerging Markets: Investors aren’t overly concerned about the recent political turmoil in Thailand, where protesters are demanding the government’s resignation and curbs on its monarchy—after shaking world markets in 1998, “the country of 70 million has become a financial afterthought, accounting for just two percent of global emerging market indices.”

* Commodities: “The diesel market serves as a barometer for the state of the economy because the fuel is widely used in the transportation industry, and the signals it’s giving off in terms of supply, demand, and prices don’t point to a very promising future.”

* Streetwise: With M down 56 percent so far this year, JWN down 65 percent, and KSS down 52 percent, investors should consider dumping shares of the struggling retailers by Thanksgiving if they expect a year-end rush for tax selling, says columnist Jack Hough—because shopping trends might look good around then but could be much worse later.

Variety : James Bond Film ‘No Time to Die’ Explored $600 Million Sale to Streami

James Bond Film ‘No Time to Die’ Explored $600 Million Sale to Streaming Services

Apple, Netflix and other streaming services explored the possibility of acquiring “No Time to Die,” the upcoming James Bond movie that was originally slated to debut last April. The film’s release has been postponed multiple times, with the Daniel Craig vehicle moving back to November before being pushed into 2021 as the number of coronavirus cases kept growing.

MGM, the studio behind the film, reportedly lost between $30 million to $50 million due to the delays, insiders said. Bloomberg first reported the discussions, which have been the topic du jour in Hollywood this week. Other studios, such as Paramount and Sony, have raked in tens of millions by selling movies like “Greyhound,” “Coming 2 America” and “Without Remorse” to streaming services while the exhibition sector continues to struggle during the pandemic.

“We do not comment on rumors. The film is not for sale. The film’s release has been postponed until April 2021 in order to preserve the theatrical experience for moviegoers,” an MGM spokesperson told Variety.

However, multiple insiders at rival studios and companies said that a possible Bond sale was explored overtly, and believe that MGM was at least open to the possibility of unloading their crown jewel for a princely sum. The studio was said to be looking for a deal of roughly $600 million — a price tag that was deemed too rich for two of the free-spending streaming services. A sale of this magnitude would be led exclusively by Kevin Ulrich, the chairman and CEO of MGM’s majority owner Anchorage Capital Group, insiders said.

It’s unclear if producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, who exert control of the series through their company Eon, would sign off on the deal. Universal Pictures, which has foreign distribution rights to “No Time to Die,” would have to be made whole in any possible sale and reimbursed for any expenses the studio incurred. That the parties involved would explore a streaming sale is notable, given that the film was the first tentpole to move release dates before coronavirus was upgraded to a global pandemic — making it an early indicator that even the iconic spy and ladies man would not save us from the viral event.

Moving “No Time to Die” to a streaming service poses some logistical challenges. The film costs more than $250 million to produce and has lined up several promotional partnerships to help defray those costs — including Land Rover, Omega watches and Heineken. Those companies may have been expecting the film to hit theaters and might not be thrilled with a streaming-only bow. “Coming 2 America’s” sale to Amazon, for instance, was contingent on making sure that its promotional partners, McDonald’s and Crown Royal, were on board with the change in plans.

>>> US Close Dow -0.10% S&P +0.34% Nasdaq +0.37% Russell +0.63%

Closing Stock Market Summary

The S&P 500 increased 0.4% on Friday in a tight-ranged session that lacked conviction. The Russell 2000 gained 0.6%, and the Nasdaq Composite gained 0.4%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, however, declined 0.1%. 

The underperformance of the Dow was linked to weakness in Intel (INTC 48.20, -5.70, -10.6%) and American Express (AXP 100.99, -3.80, -3.6%) following their earnings reports. Intel warned about operating margin next quarter, and the 10.6% post-earnings decline pressured the top-weighted S&P 500 information technology sector (-0.1%). 

The energy sector (-0.5%) was the only other sector that closed lower due to weakness in oil prices ($39.88/bbl, -0.77, -1.9%). A relatively strong finish in the market, meanwhile, was led by the communication services (+1.1%) and real estate (+0.7%) sectors.

The Dow Jones Transportation Average (+1.1%) was another area of relative strength amid solid gains in the airline stocks. 

In stimulus news, Treasury Mnuchin said there were still significant differences despite meeting with House Speaker Pelosi numerous times this week. White House Chief of Staff Meadows, however, told reporters that he hopes to have a stimulus deal over the weekend. 

Separately, Gilead Sciences (GILD 60.79, +0.12, +0.2%) received FDA approval for its remdesivir drug used to treat COVID-19. Shares spiked 5% on the news but ended the session with a 0.2% gain in a sell-the-news reaction. 

U.S. Treasuries finished near their flat lines to reclaim early losses. The 2-yr yield increased one basis point to 0.16%, and the 10-yr yield declined one basis point to 0.84% after touching 0.87% at its high. The U.S. Dollar Index declined 0.2% to 92.72. 

Reviewing today's economic data: the preliminary Markit Manufacturing PMI increased to 53.3 in October from 53.2 in September. The preliminary Markit Services PMI increased to 56.0 in October from 54.6 in September.

Looking ahead, investors will receive New Home Sales for September on Monday.

  • Nasdaq Composite +28.7% YTD
  • S&P 500 +7.3% YTD
  • Dow Jones Industrial Average -0.7% YTD
  • Russell 2000 -1.7% YTD