However, as returns last night began to show that she might not win and then that Trump was coming out on top, futures dropped sharply. Futures traded in an astonishing 1,172 point range. They went from down 867 to 305 points up for the Dow Jones (DJI). The index ended up closing at 18,589.69 just short of its record high back on August 15 a climb of 1.4 percent for the day
The liberal economist Paul Krugman wrote for the New York Tiimes, as Trump appeared likely to win and futures were plunging:
It really does now look like President Donald J. Trump, and markets are plunging. When might we expect them to recover?.. If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never.
Krugman said at any time to put “an irresponsible, ignorant man who takes his advice from all the wrong people in charge of the nation with the world’s most important economy would be very bad news. What makes it especially bad right now, however, is the fundamentally fragile state much of the world is still in, eight years after the great financial crisis.”
Markets recovered by the time the stock markets opened and the Dow Jones closed up from its previous close by 255.27 points. Trump the campaigner and Trump the president appeared quite different to investors. Krishna Memani, chief investment officer at Oppenheimer Funds said: “People focus on the fact that his acceptance speech kind of changed the direction of the market. It was far more conciliatory and far more fiscal-focused than these acceptances typically are. That made a world of difference.”
Lowell Yura, of BMO Global Asset Management in Chicago said: “Our base case is we’re more likely to see a more moderate president than we saw as a candidate, and the market’s agreeing with that.”
European markets reversed course. The Stoxx Europe 600 wiped out a deficit of as much as 2.4 percent to end up 1.5 percent higher. John Haynes who heads Investec Wealth and Investment in London said: “If fiscal spending comes up front and generates growth, ultimately that’s good for Europe. There’s no reason to think Trump is anti-Europe rather than pro-America, and the recovery in Europe should stay on track everything else being equal.” However, David Schiegoleit a senior portfolio manager in California said that if Trump continued in the style of his victory speech this could go over well, but if he returned to his campaign style of bombastic statements that were often unclear markets would react negatively.
Other indices also did well. The S & P gained 23.52 points to 2,163.08 or 1.1 percent. The Nasdaq rose 57.58 points to 5,251.07 or 1.11 percent. The Toronto-based S&P/TSX was up by 103.97 points to 14,759.9. The U.S. dollar was at 1.3378 Canadian, up 0.73 of a cent.
Trump has already set up a website for his transition team. Some of his transition team are discussed in this article. His apparent choice to head transition plans for the Environmental Protection Agency(EPA) is likely to enrage environmentalists but be a plus for many businesses who fret about the cost of environmental regulations: “Myron Ebell, director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute, is spearheading Trump’s transition plans for EPA, the sources said.” Ebell is a climate change skeptic.
