| The U.S. vote count drags on as Trump adds lawsuits. The Fed says more support is needed. And Alibaba's slower growth adds to investor concerns. Democratic nominee Joe Biden is inching closer to the 270 electoral votes he needs to win the presidency, while Donald Trump's legal team continues to fight the ballot counting process. Biden needs a win in one more state — Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada or North Carolina — provided that other race calls stand. But Trump has expanded his list of lawsuits to include Nevada, adding to challenges in Michigan, Georgia and Pennsylvania. Bloomberg News senior editor Derek Wallbank notes: "Georgia is further narrowing, now under 10,000 margin in the Decision Desk HQ count. This is going to be very, very tight." Read more on our blog and see live election results here. MarketsA global equity rally looked set to extend in Asia after investors as investors bought into technology and health-care firms. The S&P 500 rose almost 2% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 surged closer to 3%. Futures in Japan and Hong Kong pointed to modest gains. Gold surged, while Treasuries were little changed. The yen strengthened past the closely watched 104 per dollar level. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell stressed that the economy needs more fiscal and monetary policy support, and warned that mounting coronavirus infection rates are a risk. "I think we'll have a stronger recovery if we can just get at least some more fiscal support," Powell said Thursday after the Fed kept interest rates near zero and made no change to its pace of asset purchases. The surge in new Covid-19 cases around the world is "particularly concerning," he added. Meanwhile, it looks like the U.S. labor market probably extended its rebound last month, but the outlook for continued job growth is weakening. Alibaba's revenue grew at its slowest pace on record for a September quarter, underscoring how the e-commerce giant's post-pandemic rebound is starting to plateau. It reported a 30% rise in sales in the September quarter, in line with expectations but down a tad from the previous three months. That concerned investors worried about the scrutiny that forced sister company Ant Group to call off its $35 billion IPO earlier this week. China's squashing of the hotly anticipated IPO highlights a global challenge as fintech upstarts invade the territory of central banks. Speaking of IPOs, ByteDance is in discussions to raise $2 billion before listing some of its businesses in Hong Kong, people familiar with the matter said. While the S&P 500 was enjoying the biggest post-election surge in modern stock-market history on Wednesday — tacking on $600 billion of fresh value — most of its members fell. That's thanks to the reigning oligarchy of tech behemoths soaring past everything else. Investors are reverting to what works, a yearlong trend in which the very heft of companies like Apple and Microsoft schleps the whole market past a damaging pandemic and deep economic downturn. It was just last week that solid quarterly earnings reports from most of the Faang stocks failed to inspire share-price gains. What We've Been ReadingThis is what's caught our eye over the past 24 hours: And finally, here's what Tracy's interested in todaySo stocks are up and the VIX, a measure of Wall Street's expectations for future volatility in stocks, is down. All of this is happening even as President Donald Trump files lawsuits to contest a win by Joe Biden in the U.S. elections. The VIX has tumbled sharply from over 35 before the vote began to about 27 now. But it's really the term structure of the VIX — which shows the price of VIX futures contracts of different maturities — that I'm keeping an eye on. We've talked before about how the VIX curve generally slopes upwards as market participants are willing to pay more for volatility protection over the long-term than in the short-term. But for most of 2020, the VIX curve has been downward-sloping as investors pay up for volatility insurance in the near-term.  Bloomberg Bloomberg This backwardated term structure, as it's known, has largely been attributed to investors pricing in the risk of a contested election. But if you peek into the actual contracts that make up the curve, you could also see something else beginning to emerge. The November contract fell sharply by 6 points on Thursday as Biden appeared to close in on victory, while the December contract fell 4 points, the one for January 2021 rose by 1 point and February jumped by 2. The resilience of the December and January contracts suggests that investors are still worried about something. That could be anything from the risk of a contested election, to a spike in Covid-19 cases during the U.S. winter, or even the potential for fiscal stimulus (as stock market rallies have tended to generate higher volatility premiums this year). There might be yet another reason for investors to pay a premium in this period too. Trump hasn't always played by the rules of previous presidents and there's a risk that he will surprise the world — and the market — with something unexpected before January 20, when he would have to step down if Biden is officially declared the winner. You can follow Tracy Alloway on Twitter at @tracyalloway. | 
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