Markets brace for election night: OP Gas is the toll trade, Atlantic Terminal is the Hochul trade

The New A Stock Exchange closed its last session before Election Day on Monday with traders betting, cautiously, on the polls. With Governor Kathy Hochul ahead by eleven to fourteen points in the three final public surveys, the stocks most exposed to the Congestion Relief Zone drifted the way a Hochul win would push them. Nobody bet the house.

The toll trade is OP Gas. Its two filling stations, on Church Avenue in Mill Bergen and on Flatbush Avenue on Long Island, sit on either side of the zone, and the stock has risen on every promise from Long Island Executive Bruce Blakeman to switch the gantries off. It slipped one percent on Monday. A Blakeman upset would mean more minecarts on the road and, traders say, a sharp move the other way — with General Motors, which sells the carts, and Cray Industries on Soundview Avenue following it up.

The Hochul trade is underground. Madison International Realty and Silvernine Properties, the partners behind Atlantic Terminal, depend on the toll money that is paying for the dig, and both rose on Monday; Verizon, whose redstone keeps the Metro’s signals talking, edged up with them. Juniors, whose line on Atlantic Parkway is fed by the fare-free Tiger Bus, remains the exchange’s favourite joke trade and one of its calmest stocks.

Then there is the order of the count. Mill Bergen reports first and votes Blakeman, and desks expect a brief jump in OP Gas when it does. “Don’t trade the first ward,” one Lower Man A strategist said. “Trade Flatbush.” The big Democratic wards — Flatbush, Downtown New BK and most of Man A — come in later in the night.

CNN and FOX News trade as blue chips that no New A headline moves far, but New A 1 and Madison Broadcasting, owner of PIX 11 Long Island, tend to rise into a big night of viewers. Prices will move through the night as the returns come in.