“Stocks were choppy this morning, as investors digested what President Obama’s reelection would mean for portfolios and Wall Street,” Abram Brown reports for Forbes. “When exit polls seemed to suggest the president’s victory late last night, stock futures declined precipitously. Then, as it became evident that Obama won a clear victory against Republican challenger Mitt Romney, stocks ventured higher. Though, in pre-market trading, futures were decidedly still down. Dow Jones industrial average futures edged down 0.6%. Nasdaq composite futures lost 0.7%. And S&P 500 futures gave up 0.7%.”

Brown reports, “Yet, Washington, D.C.’s landscape remains unchanged. Democrats control the White House and the Senate, Republicans run the House. Immediate attention will shift toward solving the fiscal cliff. ‘The history of the relationship between Obama and the Congressional leadership is one of eventual compromise, though not in the absence of circumstances forcing both parties to the table,’ says Citi economist Tina Fordham, who correctly called the preservation of D.C.’s status quo. ‘Our expectation continues to be that the trail of last-minute, heart-attack compromises will continue, given the same actors retaining their positions, with appetite for comprehensive reform limited.’

“In early morning trading, Western Union gained 7.8%, as Apple [is down 1.57%, losing $9.16 to $573.69],” Brown reports. “Pioneer Natural Resources rose 1.7%. Meanwhile, among the morning’s losers, Express Scripts gave up 11%, and Occidental Petroleum dropped 1.9%.”

Read more in the full article here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews readers too numerous to mention individually for the heads up.]