In the run up to the US Elections, citizens all over the world were so sure that Hillary Clinton would overrule her main contender, Donald Trump. She, an established woman of politics, obviously had the upper hand against an egotistical TV personality and entrepreneur. However, the world had to prepare for Trump’s win just in case – yet there was nothing anyone wanted to prepare for. Media outlets pushed negative story after negative story; the value of the dollar would drop, there’d be a rise in racial hate crimes, women would be worse off and, a story that was pushed the most, a lot of stocks would drop beyond levels that were even comprehensible. This was a worry for the wealthier portion of America and of course for a lot of businesses too – what kind of impact would a drop in stock levels have on America’s economy? For the most part, people were worried about what would happen if Trump won.
Evidently, the scaremongering didn’t have too much of a serious effect, though, because Donald Trump did indeed end up winning the US Elections and becoming President-elect. There have been protests and fights in response to the result, but one thing that surprised everyone is how, for the most part, America is yet to see a negative impact regarding business and economics.
There’s no hiding the fact that Trump’s success in becoming President-elect was a surprise to a huge number of people, but perhaps what’s more surprising is how quickly the level of some stocks began to rise. One of the fastest to rise were the Health Care stocks – quite drastically too. Celgene, Biogen, Gilead Sciences and iShares Nasdaq Biotechnology were all on the increase on Wednesday when the results were announced, rising by well over 7%.
It seems that these same stocks would have dropped had Hillary Clinton become President-elect. Throughout her Democratic campaign, she discussed over and over how she would have curbed the rising costs of drugs and medicine, criticizing just how expensive they currently are. Had she won, people would want fewer shares in the industry for fear of losing money and stocks would have dropped quite drastically. It would have almost been a worst case scenario for the drug stocks and also for the biotech industry. However, when it comes to Donald Trump, the drugs industry, and biotech isn’t something he chose to speak about during his campaign, least of all in a negative way. Once shareholders and businesses were satisfied that Hillary would not be President, they felt confident in the stock market and so the shares quickly rose.
Having an entrepreneur win the Presidential campaign also saw a rise in the financial stocks, such as JPMorgan Chase who had a 3.4% increase in shares, and the Bank of America, who saw shares rise by a stunning 4%. Donald Trump has made his entrepreneurial style very apparent to America, sharing his aim for maximum growth in a short period – a trait that appeals to the businessmen and women of America.
Another sudden stock jump was Corrections Corporation of America. Due to Trump being keen to crack down on illegal immigrants, it’s expected that prison usage will be on the rise in a big way, which caused shares to increase by an astounding 37% – this is another stock that would not have increased under the election of Hillary Clinton.
Dow Jones has also had an impressive spike in shares since Donald Trump was deemed, President-elect. Since his electoral win, Dow Jones have actually hit an all-time high in trade, and since then have continued to see an impressive rise in stocks and shareholders.
It wasn’t all good news, unfortunately. While there were many stocks reveling in the rising number of shares, some stocks dropped quite drastically. Technology companies were hit the worst, with fears that Trump’s crack down on immigration would have an adverse effect on the companies. Large enterprises such as Amazon had a fall in shares of almost 4%, something that no one saw coming. It’s hard to tell whether tech companies would have benefited had Clinton been successful.
In addition to this negative aspect of Trump’s win, the Mexican currency has also dropped, going down 12% against the US dollar. Of course, this can only be attributed to Trump’s negative attitude towards Mexico and his vow to build a wall to separate Mexico from the USA.
Generally speaking, Trump becoming President-elect has been a very beneficial thing for Wall Street. On average, US markets have increased by 1.4% and are still on a gradual rise. Furthermore, the dollar peaked on the currency market, increasing in value by 4% compared to the drop of the Mexican peso and even the Japanese yen. It is believed that while Hillary Clinton may have been the most qualified of the two, Wall Street would not have seen such huge rise in stocks and shares had she been successful in the elections. Donald Trump is set to bring ‘Trumponomics’ to life and make America all about business again. While some have debated over whether the general rise in the market is a random surge after Trump’s initial success, there’s no doubt about it that we can expect to see a lot more happening on Wall Street over the coming months – particularly as of January 20th when Trump officially takes his place as President of the United States.
