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Trump trades take off as voting results tilt in former president’s favour

Across assets, market participants are behaving as if a ‘red wave’ is in the process of occurring, one chief investment officer says

So-called Trump trades took hold Tuesday evening — before either Trump or Democratic nominee Kamala Harris had reached the requisite 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the White House — based on the former president’s better-than-expected performance in key counties.
So-called Trump trades took hold Tuesday evening — before either Trump or Democratic nominee Kamala Harris had reached the requisite 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the White House — based on the former president’s better-than-expected performance in key counties. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Traders across an array of asset classes in financial markets were positioning in a way that made it clear they had come to the same assumption long before Tuesday evening’s election results are finalized: that Republican Donald Trump would likely take the White House.

Futures tied to all three major US stock indexes jumped, as did futures on the small-cap Russell 2000 index. US government debt aggressively sold off, sending the benchmark 10-year yield back to its highest level in four months.

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