What the Stock Market and the Midterm Elections Have Common.

Investing and politics go together about as well as mango chutney and burned hair, and we prefer to focus on the stocks and leave the pontificating about the state of the nation to the Beltway pundits. Yet we can’t help but walk away from both the market and the midterms this past week without feeling a bit more optimistic about both. Voters, you see, are splitting their tickets, and investors might be doing the same thing in their own fashion—a good sign for anyone hoping that a surreal period for both could be coming to an end.

For too many years now, both investing and politics have lacked nuance. You either voted Republican or Democrat, preferred growth to value, or tech to industrials, with little in between. But there are suggestions of nuance entering the scene, and that could help both the stock market and politics feel a touch more normal.