Trading On South America? Hey Now. What Now?

I had a list last night. American companies with plants in South America, parts on a boat, final assembly in the United States. Buy the shares before the market opens tomorrow.

Tomorrow was a Sunday word. It is Monday. São Paulo opened at ten in the morning there, nine on the East Coast. New York's bell is this morning. The list missed the bell. The list was a mood with ticker symbols in the margin.

Whit Already Has the Count

My friend Whit put Fissures up this morning. I read it before the bell. He can keep the biography and the map. I have the screen.

He has the fact. The largest country in South America came within two points of firing Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and then it rehired him. Fourth time in the chair. 51.79 percent of the valid votes, to Flávio Bolsonaro's 48.21. A little over four million votes between them. On 4 October the son was ahead. The polls were supposed to close at five in Brasília. Cristiano Zanin, the Supreme Court justice who used to be Lula's lawyer, ordered the polling machines still open to stay open until seven. Brazil's election court adopted that order. Flávio wants the day thrown out. He was quieter about the extra time his own campaign had asked for. Whit will not invent what those two hours changed. I will not either. A challenge does not fill an order.

The line I am keeping is his. Whit calls that night Almost. Almost, he says, is not a turn. A new president is not a new economy on the Monday after, and Brazil rehired the president it had. The iron ore still leaves São Luís for China. Petrobras is still the federal government's oil company, and those shares still trade in New York. A ship from Santos to Houston is still gone for weeks. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont sent his applause. Applause does not move those shares.

What the Grin Was For

I did grin. A close count, and a clock moved in the last hour: a trader can taste that kind of Sunday. The taste belonged to last night. By the time the coffee is poured, the building is still standing. Whit already wrote that ending. My shopping list ends in the same place. The dream of buying a whole supply chain before the open has missed the night it was written for.

Rio woke up to a polarized country and the same president. In Brazil, prosperity, regulation, and the police are the same argument they were on Saturday.

Mexico, Brazil, And Canada

Whit's neighbors are the countries that have been hiring different men. Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia. He says they moved for crime and for prices, and that a new man there is still not a new economy on the Monday after. I believe him. I sit in the United States with a screen. When the word is neighbors, I also hear the two countries on our own borders.

Mexico had no runoff yesterday. In March, Lula offered Mexico a partnership between Petrobras and Mexico's state oil company. Whit has that offer. Mexico's government was not on Sunday's ballot. The cartels in Mexico are a real power. They hold pieces of local government, and ordinary people live under that power. Presidents in Mexico City have spent years trying to stay upright between Washington, their own voters, and men who do not stand for election. That tightrope was there on Saturday. Sunday's result did not rewrite the job in Mexico City. A factory in Mexico that cannot be guarded does not become a bargain because Brazil rehired a president.

Canada is the other border, the one to the north. Canada had no runoff either. Ottawa has a thicket of rules, carbon policy among them, and a serious taste for taxing capital. The thicket was a Canadian argument last week. A rehire in Brasília does not pack Bay Street into suitcases bound for Rio. Investors can dislike two governments on the same morning. They have had the practice.

Cuba had no election yesterday. Havana is still a state that will not let its own people breathe. Nobody in that city was waiting on a Brazilian runoff to start the day.

November 3 Is Ours

The date for this country is Tuesday, November 3, eight days from this morning. Some of you have already voted. The polling place keeps the spare ballots in the drawer. One person, one ballot. Everybody else has the week.

I like low taxes, a lighter rulebook, and a man left alone with his work. Brazil rehired the same president. Whit has already put the new names in South America on one page. Our calendar says November 3.

The map is the same map. The fissures are open. The building did not fall. The sun is up. The new line on the desk is today's open.

— Julian B. Horrow