On Wall Street, there’s a clear favorite to win today’s election

While polls about today’s presidential election have been close to deadlocked for months, stock market investors have also been registering their expectations for who will win. And price movements — particularly in a handful of tech-related plays — are signaling a clearer prediction of the outcome.

Several investments expected to benefit if former President Donald Trump wins the election have been on the rise for the past few weeks, while investments in line to gain from a victory by Vice President Kamala Harris have sunk.

Like the signals gleaned from betting markets, the moves in stocks and funds reflect the aggregate views of investors putting money on the line, who are relying on information they’ve gathered about the election from many sources. Studies have found that such signals can be as predictive as voter polls.

So Wall Street firms have been tracking which stocks and funds seem to have been most sensitive to changes in the two candidates momentum.

One of the starkest policy differences between the candidates revolves around energy policy and climate change. Trump has long downplayed the impact of climate change and spoken in favor of traditional fossil fuel industries. He has also vowed to rollback President Biden’s efforts to fund clean energy products and technologies via the Inflation Reduction Act.

On Wall Street, that has manifested in a trade betting against the iShares Global Clean Energy ETF, which includes companies such as First Solar and Vestas Wind Systems. The fund has dropped 10 percent since the end of September, coinciding with a recovery in Trump’s polling averages, including a 1 percent daily loss at midmorning on election day.

The trend of the leading cryptocurrency may also have forecasting power. Trump has also abandoned his former hostility to cryptocurrencies, and he now touts bitcoin as a solid investment. He has talked about creating a government strategic reserve of bitcoin. When Trump first made the pledge in July, the price of bitcoin spiked to almost $70,000 but bounced up and down in ensuing months as Trump lost momentum to Harris in polls. Recently, with trump gaining some momentum, bitcoin again rallied, hitting a high of more than $72,000 at the end of October.

The bitcoin indicator for Trump’s chances has been blinking yellow since then, however, and the cryptocurrency was at close to $69,000 on election day. On election day, the price was up 2 percent at midmorning.

With Trump seen as more likely to crack down on China, further limit trade with Chinese tech companies, and impose higher tariffs on a broader array of imported goods from China, stocks from that part of the world have also traded in line with election views.

Traders pointed to moves in the KraneShares CSI China Internet ETF, which includes major Chinese players such as Alibaba Group and Tencent. The ETF rose in early October but has dropped 14 percent in the past four weeks. However, the fund was up 2 percent at midmorning on election day.

Discerning investors’ view of the election outcome from individual tech stocks has proved murkier–except perhaps for Trump’s own social media company, Trump Media & Technology group.

The stock of Trump’s Truth Social site trades at a value of almost $8 billion despite having revenue of less than $4 million over the past 12 months. The stock has been a wild ride for weeks and after dropping more than 25 percent over the past four days, the social media company gained 12 percent at midmorning on election day.

But how Trump and Harris may differ over tech antitrust policy has been less clear.

Harris is expected to continue President Joe Biden’s legal crackdown on tech giant alleged to have thwarted competition, though she has also drawn support from lawyers and venture capitalists who oppose the crackdown.

During Trump’s presidency, the government allowed most mergers without challenge but also initiated investigations of the largest tech companies. Lately, Trump has called Google “very bad” and “going to be close to shut down”

Still, the search giant has posted strong financial results. It’s shares are up 2 percent over the past month.

Aaron Pressman can be reached at aaron.pressman@globe.com. Follow him @ampressman.