Wall Street Bets on Split Congress as Midterms Near

The market signal here is less about which party wins than about the policy ceiling a split Congress imposes: gridlock limits the tail risk of sweeping fiscal or regulatory change, which is why it trades as a comfort scenario rather than a disruption. That matters most for rate-sensitive and regulation-exposed sectors, where the legislative path suddenly narrows. The historical average cited is a useful framing device, but it is a small sample and not a forecast. What's worth watching after November is whether the divided-government assumption itself holds, since positioning built on that base case is what would need repricing if it doesn't.