There's little argument that this week's election and Fed meeting are hugely important for the direction of the market. But what happens next?

As the lyric went in the 1970s song, "There's got to be a morning after." And for the markets and the economy, the mid-term elections and monetary easing decision from the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee will come and go, leading to a morning after and decisions to be made.

Some market pros already have their eyes on a fresh set of challenges that will arise once the Republicans stage their likely landslide and the Fed starts printing money again.

"Unlike what happened in the soft-patches of the mid-1980s and again in the mid-1990s, the economy today is just a shock away-even negative fiscal shocks-from slipping back into contraction mode," warned David Rosenberg, economist and strategist at Gluskin Sheff in Toronto, in his daily note.

Here is a fast list of five factors that will influence the market ahead:

1. A Trade War

In addition to aiming at getting more money flowing in the economy, the Fed's aggressive quantitative easing (QE) policies have hammered at the dollar and riled up some US trading partners.

Another round of QE isn't likely to sit well with those tiring of ballooning US debt and the nation's attempts to keep its exports cheap by weakening its currency.

"The risk that the markets are not fully appreciating is what happens if the Fed becomes very aggressive and heavy asset purchases cause further weakness in the U.S. dollar, which then touches off a currency war ...followed by a trade war?" Rosenberg asked. "The case for gold as a hedge against this more-than-remote possibility is pretty strong."

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The board of directors of Bethesda, Md.-based Lockheed Martin Corp. has approved a new $3 billion share repurchase program.

Lockheed said that the shares may be purchased in the open market, or through privately negotiated transactions, and that the dollar amount of shares purchased and the timing of purchases would be at the discretion of management.

Based on Friday’s closing price for Lockheed Martin stock of $71.78, the repurchase program could buy back approximately 41.8 million shares. Lockheed currently has approximately 360 million shares of common stock outstanding.

The defense contractor, which has seen its stock price decline 40 percent in the last two years, said that the buyback demonstrated the company’s commitment to enhancing stockholder value through cash deployment.

Shares of Chinese tutoring company TAL Education Group are climbing after the initial public offering raised $120 million.

Shares had priced at $10 a share, the top of the expected range, suggesting strong demand for the company's stock.

Its shares rose $4.61, or 46 percent, to $14.61 in late morning trading Wednesday after rising as high as $15.70 earlier in the session.

The shares are trading under the symbol "XRS" on the New York Stock Exchange.

TAL says it is China's largest after-school tutoring service for K-12 students. Its IPO follows three strong first-day performances from Chinese companies since September.

China's interest-rate increase has less to do with the controversy over the value of its currency than with a straightforward effort to fight inflation— but it risks intensifying the currency battle nonetheless.

Many observers say China's move Tuesday to raise key rates is a textbook response to the country's strong growth, rising inflation and the risk of a dangerous property bubble. More increases are likely, they say, as China tries to slow the frenzied borrowing that helped it through the recent recession.

But the rate move—which comes just days before finance ministers and central bankers from the Group of 20 industrial and developing nations meet in South Korea—has implications for China's currency, too. In most economies, higher interest rates attract foreign investors looking for better returns. The cash flooding into the economy boosts the local currency. But China's economy is mostly closed, limiting—though not eliminating—the impact of higher rates on the yuan.

The increase in interest rates could actually complicate matters for China on the currency front, said Nicholas Lardy, a specialist in China at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a Washington think tank. Given that Chinese interest rates were already above what developed countries are paying on one-year deposits, and that the market is betting that the yuan will rise over time, the rate increase could serve only to attract more investor money.

China has told its biggest banks to increase reserves in a new move to control lending, news reports said Tuesday, as Beijing tries to cool inflation and housing prices without derailing its recovery from the global slump.

There was no government announcement, but Goldman Sachs said its researchers received confirmation of the order from bank employees. Phone calls to the central bank's press section were not answered.

The top six state-owned Chinese lenders were told to increase reserves by 0.5 percentage points to 17.5 percent of their deposits, the Beijing News and other newspapers said, citing unidentified bank employees.

China's rapid growth is easing after hitting 10.3 percent in the second quarter but inflation is creeping up and Beijing is trying to control housing prices that surged earlier amid a credit boom.

The reserve hike "is used as a clear signal to commercial banks that the central bank is willing to take actions to control lending," said Goldman economists Yu Song and Helen Qiao in a report.

Chinese banks were ordered to step up lending in support of Beijing's stimulus, which helped China rebound quickly from the global crisis. But regulators tightened controls early this year after the credit boom fueled a surge in stock and real estate prices, prompting concerns about dangerous price bubbles.

The communist government imposed lending curbs and raised reserve requirements but has avoided a rate hike that it worries might derail China's recovery.

The latest reserve hike would take about 200 billion yuan ($29 billion) out of the pool of money for lending, a relatively small amount, according to Yu and Qiao.

The decision to avoid more severe steps "may also reflect the significant uncertainties facing the economy and disagreements among the views of policy makers," they said.

The reserve hike also might be an attempt to cool a surge in inflows of foreign capital attracted by China's rebound and the strengthening of its yuan against the U.S. dollar, Nomura said in a report.