Trump win sends financial markets into overdrive

Rally driven by hopes that deregulation will boost corporate activity and earnings

- Ven Sreenivasan

Unexpected as it may have been for many market observers, Donald Trump's successful presidential bid has sent markets into overdrive, signaling Wall Street's anticipation of pro-growth and pro-business, but potentially inflationary, policies over the next four years.

Wall Street indexes reached new records on expectations that anticipated deregulation would boost corporate activity and earnings.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average shot up over 1,000 points on Nov 6 after the presidential election results poured in. For the week, the Wall Street marquee index is up 4.61 per cent to 43,988.99.

The S&P 500 saw its biggest weekly rise in a year as it briefly soared above the 6,000-point mark before settling with a 4.66 per cent weekly gain at 5,995.54. The tech-heavy Nasdaq rose 5.74 per cent to 19,286.78 points.

Tesla was the biggest winner for the week as it rose 30 per cent—not surprising, given investor Elon Musk's support for Trump. The Straits Times Index (STI) surged over 66 points after news broke of Trump's victory. The Singapore benchmark index spiked 4.8 per cent last week to 3,724.37 points—bringing it within 5 per cent striking distance of its October 2007 high at 3,906.16 points.

The STI has now generated a 20.7 per cent year-to-date total return, beating the FTSE Asia-Pacific Index's 15.5 per cent total return in Singdollar terms.

Lenders led the index, with UOB soaring 11.2 per cent, DBS Bank gaining 9.4 per cent and OCBC Bank up 5.8 per cent.

Yangzijiang Shipbuilding, which provided positive guidance for order wins, rose 5.9 per cent. Seatrium, whose chief executive Chris Ong is providing a closely watched third-quarter update on Nov 11, gained 5.3 per cent.