The Opening Belle

 European Opening Calls:#FTSE 5510 -1.29%#DAX 11381 -1.87%#CAC 4491 -1.72%#AEX 527 -1.40%#MIB 17575 -1.66%#IBEX 6298 -1.77%#OMX 1692 -1.41%#STOXX 2906 -1.81%#IGOpeningCall— IGSquawk (@IGSquawk) October 30, 2020 

Solid quarterly earnings from America’s biggest tech firms weren’t enough to keep investors from selling late Thursday, the latest sign sentiment is turning against ultra-expensive digital megacaps.

Futures on the S&P 500 tumbled 1.5% and Nasdaq 100 contracts were down 1.9% as of 2:24 p.m. in Tokyo. Stocks had rebounded from the worst selloff in four months during the cash session ahead of the slate of megacap results.

“As we’ve seen in reactions from some of the earnings from these large companies even beats are not strong enough to satisfy this market, which I think speaks to how fully valued a lot of these stocks are,” said Evan Brown, head of multi-asset strategy at UBS Asset Management.

While the companies continue to deliver strong earnings, investors have turned their focus to whether a slower-growing economy will enable profit growth that justifies sky-high valuations.

Alphabet was a bright spot, rallying 8% after it returned to growth in the third quarter after a decline in the previous period, fueled by digital advertising. The Google parent reported third-quarter revenue, minus the cost of distribution deals for its search engine, rose 15% to $38 billion.

The results failed to soothe concern that the rally in tech shares has gone too far, too fast. Optimism that their ability to cater for stay-at-home demand would help insulate the industry from a broad profit slump during the pandemic has sent their shares up 24% as a group since the start of the year, about 10 times as big as the S&P 500.

“It tells us that even though these stocks are below their late-summer highs, they’re still expensive,” said Matt Maley, chief market strategist at Miller Tabak + Co. “So unless they beat expectations in a significant way, investors are taking further profits. Who can blame them, given that the capital gains tax is going to rise if Biden wins next week?”

More than 80 million Americans have cast ballots in the U.S. presidential election, according to a tally on Thursday from the U.S. Elections Project at the University of Florida, setting the stage for the highest participation rate in over a century.

The record-breaking pace, more than 58% of total 2016 turnout, reflects intense interest in the vote, in which incumbent Donald Trump, a Republican, is up against Democratic nominee Joe Biden, a former vice president.

Democrats hold a significant advantage in early voting due to their embrace of mail balloting, which Republicans have historically cast in large numbers but have shunned amid repeated and unfounded attacks by Trump, who says the system is prone to widespread fraud.

Experts have predicted turnout will easily surpass the 138 million who voted in the 2016 presidential election that Trump won. Only 47 million votes came before Election Day in 2016.

In 20 states that report party registration data, 18.2 million registered Democrats have already voted, compared with 11.5 million Republicans and 8.8 million with no party affiliation. The data does not show for whom the votes were cast.

Ahead of the final weekend before Election Day on Tuesday, President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden will barnstorm across battleground states in the Midwest, including Wisconsin, where the coronavirus pandemic has exploded anew.

Trump, a Republican, is scheduled to campaign on Friday in Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, while Biden has planned stops in Wisconsin and Minnesota as well as Iowa.

Michigan and Wisconsin were two of the three historically Democratic industrial states, along with Pennsylvania, that narrowly voted for Trump in 2016, delivering him an upset victory. Minnesota, which has not voted for a Republican presidential candidate since 1972, is one of the few Democratic states that Trump is trying to flip this year.

The deluge of mail-in ballots makes it likely that the winner of several states, including major battlegrounds such as Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, will not be clear on Tuesday night, as election officials expect the vote-tallying to take days.

On Thursday, a federal appeals court barred Minnesota election officials from implementing a plan to count ballots arriving up to a week after Election Day as long as they were postmarked by next Tuesday.

Trump has repeatedly claimed without evidence that mail-in ballots are susceptible to fraud and has more recently argued that only the results available on election night should count.

Early voting data show that far more Democrats have voted by mail, while Republicans are expected to turn out in greater numbers on Tuesday.

As a result, preliminary results from states like Pennsylvania that do not begin counting mail-in ballots until Election Day could show Trump in the lead before flipping as more Democratic-heavy ballots are added, a phenomenon some have called the “red mirage” and the “blue shift.” Several Pennsylvania counties have said they will not begin counting mail-in ballots until Wednesday.

China will increase the incomes of low-income groups and expand middle class over the 2021-2025 period, Ning Jizhe, the vice head of the National Development and Reform Commission, said at a news conference in Beijing on Friday.

China aims to let consumption play a basic role in supporting economic growth, said Ning. At the same conference, Han Wenxiu, a senior Communist Party official, said China will expand market access for foreign investors.

 🇺🇸 The US reported its biggest single-day jump in #COVID19 cases of the pandemic, with more than 88,000 new infections on Thursday and more than 1,000 deaths for the second day running - FT pic.twitter.com/lH68JrfE33— Anthony Barton (@ABartonMacro) October 30, 2020 

 GROSSLY DELAYED PRODUCT— Ivan the K™ (@IvanTheK) October 29, 2020