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Markets might have sold off on Trump's win but this is far from anyone's definition of panic.
Investment bankers are optimists by nature and so it didn't take them long to decide that the election of president-to-be Donald Trump - which so few had predicted - will be a good thing for financial markets, once the immediate sell-off in equities and emerging currencies passes.
"Polls had suggested that Clinton was likely to win and markets expected that as well," points out Bilal Hafeez, head of fixed income research EMEA at Nomura.
The first reaction to a Trump victory was strongly negative. S&P 500 futures were limit down 5% before US markets even opened; stock markets in Asia fell between 2% and 4%.
The Mexican peso at one stage tumbled 13.20% while the South African rand collapsed by 4.24%. Meanwhile, in the converse risk aversion trades, the Japanese yen surged by 3.83% and the Swiss franc was up 2.3%.
For Hafeez: "The big question now is how the Federal Reserve will react and the key factor there is how weak equity markets will be in the weeks ahead."
Maybe not so weak after all?
Mark Haefele, UBS
"We had expected a Clinton victory and a Republican congress, so the status quo," admits Mark Haefele, global chief investment officer at UBS.
"The big question now is what will Trump's legislative agenda be and until there is clarity on that markets will be volatile. It's a reminder that elections matter, but fundamentals matter more."
The basic call at UBS, and across much of Wall Street, is now that fundamentals are sound, that profits can increase with a shot in the arm from fiscal expansion, tax cuts and higher...





