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shutdown watch

Traders are getting more and more pessimistic about the government shutdown ending any time soon

The market expects the shutdown to last well into November.

As the government shutdown that began at the beginning of the month enters into its fourth week, market pessimism about a speedy resolution to the impasse has grown substantially, based on the prevailing sentiment gleaned from prediction market data.

In particular, data from the “How long will the government shutdown last?” contract offered by Robinhood allows us to look at granular shifts in how traders perceive the negotiations to be going.

(Robinhood Markets, Inc. is the parent company of Sherwood Media, an independently operated media company.)

The price of an asset resolves to $1 in the event it occurs and $0 in the event it does not. Until that official resolution, the market price of the asset varies, and is a proxy for the percentage chance the market assigns to it happening.

Based on the implied probabilities represented by the prices of different tranches of these contracts, we can see how the median number of expected days of the shutdown have changed.

The priced-in chance of a shutdown lasting over sixty days has now hit 25 percent, which would mean the government is closed through at least the end of November. As it stands, based on pricing data current to Sunday, the median expected total length of the shutdown is now 44 days, bringing it to mid-November.

If traders expected that a resolution to the negotiations was approaching, we would expect to see the number of days remaining in a shutdown decline. If traders price that negotiations are at a stalemate and conditions for a resolution are not moving, we would expect the number of days of the shutdown to increase at a rate of one day per day, and the days remaining to stay flat.

We are not seeing that.

What we are seeing is something worse: traders are more pessimistic about resolving the shutdown today than they were a little over a week ago. Given that we are today 21 days into shutdown, expectations have shifted.

On October 8, the median expected length of the shutdown in total was 23 days, implying traders expected the shutdown would continue for another 15 days.

As of Sunday October 19, the median expected total length of the shutdown was 44 days, implying that traders are pricing in another 25 days of shutdown.

Essentially, the market’s saying that we’re further away from a resolution to the shutdown than we were even a week ago, that the situation has deteriorated and not improved.

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OK, so when was the longest shutdown in US history?

The US government officially shut down at 12:01 a.m. on Wednesday after senators failed to agree on a last-minute funding bill. Though initially shrugging off the threat of a shutdown during yesterday’s session, stocks were mildly in the red on Wednesday as investors reacted to what is now the 11th shutdown in the government’s history.

Until this latest shutdown, there had been 20 government funding gaps experienced since 1976 — though not all ended in a full shutdown, with full closure averted in half of those cases.

Indeed, prior to the 1980s, funding gaps didn’t typically have major effects on government operations, with agencies continuing to operate on the basis that the funding would come eventually. However, a more stringent interpretation of the rules led to a stricter appropriations process from the early 1980s onward, with many subsequent funding gaps resulting in a shutdown of affected agencies (unless the gaps were quickly fixed or occurred over a weekend).

Obviously, the duration of the latest shutdown is still unclear, but it will continue until Congress passes a funding bill — most likely via a “continuing resolution,” which has ended every shutdown since 1990. Data analyzed by USAFacts suggest that it might not be a one- or two-day affair, as funding gaps have lengthened in recent years.

Government shutdown patterns
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Indeed, the last shutdown, which began in December 2018, ended up becoming the longest in history, at a whopping 34 days. By the time the government reopened in January 2019, about $3 billion (in 2019 dollars) had been wiped from the GDP in Q4, per data from the Congressional Budget Office, with approximately $18 billion in “federal discretionary spending” delayed over the roughly five-week stretch.

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GM climbs following upgrade, report that Trump administration seeks stake in its lithium mine partner

Shares of General Motors rose more than 2% in premarket trading Wednesday following an upgrade of the stock by UBS from neutral to buy. The firm also hiked its price target for GM by 45% to $81.

Also likely elevating GM was a Reuters report that the Trump administration is exploring taking a 10% stake in Lithium Americas, the automaker’s partner in a yet to open Thacker Pass lithium mine. Shares of Lithium Americas surged 68% in the premarket.

GM, which invested $625 million into the lithium mine last year, holds a 38% stake in the joint venture. The mine is expected to become the Western Hemispheres primary lithium source in 2028, when it’s slated to open, producing enough of the metal to make 800,000 electric vehicle batteries.

Prior to its plans for Lithium Americas, the Trump administration last month said it would take a 10% stake in Intel. In July, it announced a 15% stake in rare earths miner MP Materials.

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Sherwood Media, LLC produces fresh and unique perspectives on topical financial news and is a fully owned subsidiary of Robinhood Markets, Inc., and any views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of any other Robinhood affiliate, including Robinhood Markets, Inc., Robinhood Financial LLC, Robinhood Securities, LLC, Robinhood Crypto, LLC, or Robinhood Money, LLC.