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Gold has traded between $1,272 and $1,291 so far today…as of 10:30 am Pacific, bullion is down $7 an ounce at $1,274 as U.S. election watchers weigh reports of record Latino voter turnout in the key swing state of Florida…Silver is up 15 cents to $18.31…Copper, which is showing impressive strength, has added another 6 cents to $2.37…Crude Oil is 23 cents higher at $45.12 while the U.S. Dollar Index has gained one-fifth of a point to 97.91…the Mexican peso has jumped to a 2-month high against the greenback, another indication the market (rightly or wrongly) is pricing in a Hillary Clinton victory today…

Nickel and Copper each hit new 2016 highs today…robust Chinese demand for Nickel and other metals on signs of economic stabilization in the world’s largest consumer of metals has broadly supported the recovery from multi-year lows early this year…Nickel also continues to benefit from concerns about production in the Philippines, the world’s largest supplier of the metal, given the decidedly anti-mining government that is now in power there…officials will soon decide on the fate of several mines accused of violating environmental rules…

The World Gold Council reported this morning that demand for Gold-backed exchange-traded products was the only bright spot within the global market during Q3…ETP demand between July and September totaled 311.4 tonnes, up 44% compared to the 3rd quarter of 2015…

“Low and negative global interest rates have already created a structural shift in how institutional investors allocate within their portfolios,” stated Juan Carlos Artigas, director of investment research for the organization, in an interview with Kitco News.  “You have too many investors looking for yield more in risk assets. One of the ways to balance that risk is by adding more Gold to the portfolio.”

Meanwhile, India’s Gold demand could fall as much as 24% in 2016 to the lowest level in 7 years due to higher prices and increased smuggling as the government seeks to bring transparency to bullion purchases, the WGC said…

Historic Election Day In U.S.

The fact that Donald Trump, the blue collar billionaire with no previous political experience, has a realistic chance of pulling off a victory today that would discombobulate the establishment is a remarkable achievement, regardless of whether he actually wins…he’s all but guaranteed to capture more states than Mitt Romney in 2012 and could hit the magic 270 number by taking Ohio (he leads in polls there), Florida (toss-up), North Carolina (toss-up) while pulling off an upset in either Pennsylvania (very close) or Michigan where he spoke passionately before thousands of charged-up voters in his final campaign rally that didn’t conclude until just after 1:00 am eastern…

Trump is the “change maker”, which ultimately could be the catalyst with the voters that vaults him into the White House, but Wall Street appears more comfortable with the idea of a Clinton victory (the “devil” they know) as well as continued gridlock in Washington…while Trump is not a traditional Republican candidate, the stock market has performed better during Democratic presidencies…over the terms of Democratic presidents going back to 1897, the Dow has been positive for all but one, with an average gain of 82% versus a 47% gain during Republican presidencies…

The difference is even more dramatic when considering the performance of the S&P 500…the broader market index was higher during the term of the 7 Democratic presidents going back to the 1920’s with an average gain of 96% versus a gain of just 29% in the 8 Republican presidential terms…

Three of those 8 presidencies saw negative returns – Herbert Hoover, Richard Nixon and George W. Bush…so far, the S&P 500 has climbed about 145% during Obama’s term, bested only by the 209% return during the Bill Clinton era…

Historically, what the market appears to really find exciting is a Democratic President balanced off by a Republican Congress…

Republicans are sure to maintain their majority in the House today but are struggling to hold on to the Senate…

Will Lichtman Be Right Again?

American University professor Allan Lichtman has correctly predicted the results of every presidential election since 1984…interestingly, though, his method does not rely on polls, demographics or an analysis of swing states…rather, Lichtman has developed 13 keys to predicting the election based on the performance of the party currently in the White House…

“There’s a real theory behind this. And the theory is presidential elections don’t work the way we think they do,” Lichtman stated. “They’re not decided by the turns of the campaigns, the speeches, the debates, the fundraising. Rather, presidential elections are fundamentally referenda on the performance of the party holding the White House. If that performance is good enough, they get 4 more years. If it’s not, they’re turned out and the challenging part wins.”

Lichtman says this has been the hardest race he’s had to predict but his model says Trump will score a narrow win…

U.S. Voters Consider Marijuana Initiatives Today

Nearly a quarter of Americans will live in areas where recreational marijuana use is legal if voters approve initiatives today permitting the recreational use of cannabis in California, Massachusetts and 3 other states…with pot already legal for use by adults in 4 states and the District of Columbia, a win for legalized marijuana in California alone would make the entire West Coast a cannabis-friendly zone, completing a geographical march that started in the left-leaning states of Washington and Oregon…potential victories in Arizona, Nevada, Massachusetts and Maine would fill in much of the rest of the West and extend recreational use to the Northeast…opinion polls show voters favoring the initiative in all 5 states…in addition, measures to legalize medical marijuana or expand its use are on the ballot in North Dakota, Montana, Arkansas and Florida…25 states already have legalized cannabis in some form, whether medical or recreational, or both…

Scary U.S. Economic Data

As U.S. voters head to the polls today, they may wish to consider this: government employees in the United States outnumber manufacturing employees by 9.9 million according to data released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics…the BLS has published seasonally-adjusted month-by-month employment data for both government and manufacturing going back to 1939…for half a century, from January 1939 through July 1989, manufacturing employment always exceeded government employment in the U.S….

In Today’s Morning Musings…

1. Crude and Copper – where to from here?…

2. Momentum builds in Canadian Zeolite (CNZ, TSX-V)…

3. Sokoman Iron (SIC, TSX-V) update…

4. NexGen Energy (NXE, TSX-V) shows signs of life on fresh drill results from Arrow deposit…

5. AuRico Metals (AMI, TSX) drills 628 m grading 0.53 g/t Au and 0.41% Cu at Kemess…

Plus more…click here to read the rest of today’s Morning Musings and all BMR exclusive content, through a risk-free Pro, Gold or Basic package, or login with your username and password…