The Most Anticipated Day in Market History?

It sure feels like it. Normally I'd say that's a recipe for disaster, but given that all the Fed has to do to make today a "success" is open up the liquidity floodgates, I doubt you'll see an immediate negative reaction that sticks to the announcement. They will then mop up that liquidity at a later date on an unrelated news headline to make it appear that the headline is what caused the market to fall. Ok, ok, it's a bit conspiratorial, but if you were an institution with the power to do it, and you were fighting for your own survival, wouldn't you do the same?

Something more I've learned about trading around news. Wait at least a half hour AFTER the announcement to do any trading. The first 15 minutes or so can be very volatile as stops are popped. Usually the true direction is known about a half hour later (i.e., if the market is up after 30 mins, the reaction was positive). Even then, it's still highly dangerous to speculate on market direction based on trading action today. If I were day trading or making a decision about my positions, I'd wait till tomorrow morning/afternoon.

It appears "sell the news" for the election results has completed and now they are buying ahead of the announcement. This didn't exactly fit my scenario in that there was no gap down, but the general pattern of selling the news is still more or less in place.

I spoke about the relative performance of leading sectors up to the announcement. It's clear that financials and real estate have not been leading the way higher recently. That doesn't mean the rally is weakening per se, but it does show a potential underlying weakness if this relationship continues to deteriorate.