Global stocks rise and US futures recover from brief slide after Trump effectively declared victory in the still-ongoing election
- Global shares, the dollar and US Treasury prices rose, recovering from an earlier stumble when President Donald Trump said he would ask the Supreme Court to stop vote counting and effectively declared victory in a race that was still ongoing.
- US stock futures recovered, having initially nosedived after Trump's comments, with technology stocks and small caps leading the charge higher.
- Trade-sensitive currencies like the Mexican peso and the yuan fell to one-month lows.
- Here is the latest on the election results.
Global equity markets rose on Wednesday, having recovered some ground lost after President Donald Trump said he would ask the Supreme Court to stop all vote counting in a hotly contested election and effectively declared victory, despite the results in a number of states being as yet unavailable.
Trump falsely claimed on Twitter earlier in the day that Democrats had stolen the election, as was widely expected, given he had frequently said, in the run-up to the vote, that there would be mass fraud with mail-in ballots. The count so far showed Democrat opponent Joe Biden marginally ahead, based on electoral college votes.
"We are going to win this and, as far as I'm concerned, we already have," he told his base at his campaign headquarters and added he would go to the Supreme Court to stop vote counting.
"It can be argued that the language from both sides could be building towards contesting the election if the results are close. This too would likely erode risk appetite and support the greenback," strategists at Rabobank said.
The MSCI All-World index was last up 1.8%, while US stock futures bounced back sharply, paring earlier losses following Trump's press conference.
"Given that the risk of a contested election is higher than priced by the market – and that US equities sold off 8% while the Supreme Court decided what to do with the Florida recount in 2000 – our overall bias is that risk assets and risk-sensitive currencies will remain vulnerable this week," ING strategist Chris Turner said.
Futures on US benchmark indices rose, while the VIX volatility index dropped. Futures on the the S&P 500 rose 0.5%, while those on the Dow Jones see-sawed, last down 0.2%. which in turn fed into weakness in futures on the small-cap Russell 2000, which fell 2.2%. Futures on the technology-heavy Nasdaq 100 rallied 2.3%.
The dollar swept higher, gaining particularly against emerging-market currencies that are more sensitive to trade with the United States, such as the Mexican peso and the Chinese yuan, which briefly hit one-month lows against the US currency.
"One of the few things clear so far is that we are not going to see a Democrat landslide win as polls had suggested. That has wrong-footed an FX market which was positioned for some clarity. ING's Chris Turner said.
The peso fell to its lowest against the dollar in a month, falling by around 2.7% on the day, while the offshore yuan dropped 0.9%
The dollar index rallied by 0.4%, driven by gains against the yen, which fell 0.5% and the euro, which shed 0.3%.
Blue-chip shares in Asia rose fairly broadly, but investors brought benchmark indices off session highs after Trump's comments. Japan's Nikkei remained the strongest performer, closing up 1.7% thanks to the weakness in the yen, while Seoul's KOSPI rose 0.8%. Chinese and China-sensitive indices were more muted. The Shanghai Composite was up 0.2%, while Australia's S&P/ASX 200 fell 0.1%.
Treasury yields dropped along the curve, making the 10-year note one of the best-performing assets of the day so far. The 10-year note was last at 0.7930%, down 9 basis points, in its largest one-day fall in five months, while yields on the 30-year bond fell 11 basis points to 1.569%, its biggest daily fall since April.