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Rick, stick around with us because we have a little bit more of a conversation that might be up your alley as well here. At least three more Democrats are calling for President Biden to end his reelection bid after Thursday night's post-NATO press conference, bringing the tally to 17. Despite current election uncertainty, it seems that markets are largely shrugging it off so far. To discuss, let's bring in Yahoo Finance's very own Julie Hyman here in studio with us. Hey, Julie.

Hi, Brad. And specifically here, we should say the equity markets have been shrugging it off thus far. One of the ways that we measure the nervousness in the equity market is the so-called VIX, the fear index as some dubbed it, which basically measures volatility within the S&P 500. And bespoke Investment Group brought us this chart, which I think is an interesting one. They picked July 9th, sort of a midpoint here of the election year-ish and looked at where the VIX was going all the way back to election years to 1992, and it's the lowest this year at 12.5 on July 9th. So showing there's just not a lot of volatility, not a lot of movement around the election, at least not yet. Take a look at the VIX itself and you can also see this. Here's the VIX year to date. Now, the VIX is affected by a lot, just like markets are affected by a lot that has nothing to do with the election. And of course, the melt-up in the S&P 500 is also one of the reasons why the VIX has been pretty low, except for a little bit of a bout of volatility back in April. So, what is going on here? Why might we be seeing this sort of lack of action? Well, no matter who wins, some investors might see the election as sort of a win-win. After all, we have had a rally under President Biden, but as we saw stocks also did well under President Trump. There have been some business leaders that have said they are looking for potentially to some kind of a pullback in regulation potentially under Trump. That could be one of the reasons perhaps. Also, for all of this talk about whether President Biden will or should step aside as the Democratic candidate, in the end, maybe he won't, maybe it doesn't have a difference in the race. You know, so it's not something necessarily that market participants want to place a bet on yet. And that brings me to point number three. The election's just still too far away, right? And there's still too much uncertainty around it. There are other things that investors are paying attention to. There's also history is on our side. We tend to see stocks go up in presidential election years, and in particular, they tend to go up in the latter part of the year, although stocks have already done very well this year, so we'll see how that enters into the mix. Now, to put all this together, we talked to Kevin Mann yesterday, Hennion & Walsh Chief Investment Officer, and here's what he had to say about where the market, equity market's attention is right now.

I believe the market is more focused right now on when that first interest rate cut is going to take hold. Don't let it sway all of your decisions. Don't sit on the sidelines waiting for the outcome of the political elections.

You know, and he said there are potentially some sectors where we could see more of an effect, more of a binary outcome depending on which way the election goes. But the market has a lot on its mind right now in terms of investors, and the Fed is still number one, it seems, Brad.

All right, Julie, I want to invite you on over to the desk here because still with us we have Yahoo Finance's Rick Newman.

Come on over, Julie.

Hold on now. I mean, when you think about it, and Julie gave the perfect setup here, what do you think it'll take for the markets, the equity markets, to actually react? Is it just timing and proximity to the actual November date?

Yeah, get us to October 1st. I think you're going to see a lot more, uh, a lot more knee-jerkiness in markets based on, uh, which candidate seems to be a little bit ahead, who's behind if any, certainly if anything changes. Um, one thing I would add to what Julie pointed out, um, some Wall Street analysts feel like they have detected a little bit of movement in interest rates, um, based on analysis of who seems more likely to win. So I wrote about this a couple of weeks ago. When Donald, there was a point when it seemed more Donald Trump's election odds improved and rates went up by more than you would have expected based on everything else going on in the markets. And there were a few Wall Street economists who said, we think what's going on is markets are looking at Trump, two Trump policies that would be a little more inflationary than the status quo, uh, which would be the tariffs on imports, which just raises prices, that's inflationary on its face. And then Trump saying he's going to go around and have this mass deportation of undocumented documented migrants, which would just take a chunk of labor out of the United States. And those are two things Trump could do without, uh, Congress having to act. So they think, well, that suggests inflation might be a little bit higher under Trump, and maybe the Fed will not be able to cut interest rates. Um, but then I think markets have settled down, and we're just in a steady state. And what markets are looking for is not a 1 or 2 percentage point change in the polls, but does the outlook for the outcome change? Does it go from Trump seems more likely to then Biden seems more likely? And it's just too early.

Yeah, I mean, and the polls are still too close also this far out from the election. The other thing I would say is there was, um, the Wall Street Journal did a poll today on this exact topic you're talking about, which is the outlook for inflation under each of the existing candidates. And indeed, there is this broad agreement that under Trump it would be higher. Um, you know, I was talking all about the VIX, which measures volatility in the S&P 500, but there is also a bond market volatility index called the move index, MOVE. And that one has been seeing a little bit more activity in line with what you're saying about interest rates. So that would be the other thing to watch as well as sort of a proxy or maybe something that's following a little bit more closely what the election odds are.

One thing I would add is, um, markets care not just which individual wins the presidency. There are actually, there's actually more than two outcomes here because there are actually four. So does, does Biden win with a fully Democratic Congress or with a split Congress? And then does Trump win with a fully Republican Congress or a split Congress? I think markets, markets care less, markets want divided government because that means fewer radical changes. If you get a sweep by one side or the other, that suggests, um, more deeper changes on things like tax policy and stuff like that. So as we get closer, again, it's too soon to be to expect markets to be pricing any of this in. But markets will be watching not just who seems likely to be to win the White House, but what the full outcome for, uh, government, uh, whether divided or united, partisan seems to be in October for sure.

Which actually made that NATO summit even more important, especially as both candidates have their own stance on international business and foreign affairs, where tariffs would be perhaps ratcheted up, uh, because of what's been campaigned on to this extent and this early on, versus where there's more of an alliance that the other is looking to perhaps solidify a little bit more at this juncture. Julie and Rick, thanks so much for taking the time with me here today.