Stock Markets Rise on French 1st Round and Trump Tax Hopes

Investors around the world cheered the French presidential election results. The hope is that the centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron will have no problem defeating the anti-EU challenger Marine Le Pen in a runoff election on May 7.

Stocks soared in Europe and were set to pop in the United States as well. The Dow rose nearly 200 points after the opening bell, a gain of about 1%.

Many market observers had worried that Le Pen, much like U.S. President Donald Trump, could wind up defying the odds and win in France.

There were also fears that far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon could pull of an upset and that the final presidential race would be between him (not Macron) and Le Pen.

And even though Le Pen is moving on to the runoff election, she still faces a big uphill climb since she is far behind Macron in the polls in a head-to-head race. Other candidates in France who lost this weekend have also quickly moved to back Macron.

“The French elections gave the markets a sigh of relief,” wrote Chuck Butler, managing director with EverBank Global Markets in a report Monday morning. “A lot of the risks that were associated with the French election have been put on the back burner.”

via CNN

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Alfonso Esparza

Alfonso Esparza

Senior Currency Analyst at Market Pulse
Alfonso Esparza specializes in macro forex strategies for North American and major currency pairs. Upon joining OANDA in 2007, Alfonso Esparza established the MarketPulseFX blog and he has since written extensively about central banks and global economic and political trends. Alfonso has also worked as a professional currency trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.
Alfonso Esparza