Jamel Toppin/The Forbes Collection
2:55 a.m. ET: Republican Donald Trump has been elected the 45th president of the United States, according to the New York Times and Associated Press, who called the election in the early hours of the morning on Wednesday. Trump’s ascendance to the White House came after a sweep of many hard fought swing states in the midwest, southeast, and rust belt, capping one of the biggest upsets in modern American political history.
At 2:50 a.m. ET, Trump took the stage at the Hilton hotel in midtown Manhattan to announce that Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton conceded defeat. In his remarks, Trump attempted to mend fences after a long and bitter presidential election. “It is time for us to come together as one united people,” Trump said. “I pledge to every citizen in the land that I will be president to all Americans,” he added, before describing an agenda he characterized as ‘America first’ while on the campaign trail.
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As the votes rolled in for Trump, U.S. stock markets plunged with futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average falling 506 points, or roughly 4%, as investors began to brace for Trump’s agenda and his anti-free trade views.
Fear of a Trump presidency was evident at the open of trading in Europe, where stocks in London plunged over 4%, and losses accelerated in Asian markets. The Hang Seng Index in Hong Kong tumbled 2.7%, the South Korean Kospi fell 2.5% and the Japanese Nikkei 225 was down 5.1%. Australian and New Zealand markets fell by a similar measure.
Assets that rise in value during periods of market upheaval, for instance the U.S. dollar, gold, and government bonds, surged. Gold rose $41 to $1,316 a troy ounce, or over 3.2%. Ten-year U.S. Treasury note yields fell 12 basis points to 1.73%, indicating an investor flight to the safety of government bonds. The euro fell 2%, while the Japanese yen fell 3%.
The Mexican peso, the asset that has swung most violently depending on prospects for the presidential vote, plunged. On Tuesday, as Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton showed strength in early voting, the peso rose to two-week highs. However, it tumbled over 13.07% after midnight when CNN called a string of states for Trump including Ohio, Florida, Iowa, North Carolina and Utah.
States that continue to hang in the balance include Virginia and Michigan are trending in Clinton’s direction, while Pennsylvania is moving in Trump’s favor. New Hampshire remains too close to call. But Trump has won a clear path to the presidency with 288 electoral college votes.
As voting has come in decidedly in favor of Trump, defying the expectations of almost every national poll and many state polls, it was the IBD/TIPP Tracking poll that may have won Tuesday. It predicted Trump’s victory in a final national survey on Tuesday afternoon.
Others who foresaw Trump’s outperformance in the general election, for instance DoubleLine Capital’s Jeffrey Gundlach, did not back down from their calls on Tuesday.
“I think we can all agree that Donald J. Trump has massively outperformed expectations in the past,” said Gundlach on a conference call with investors Tuesday evening. Such an outcome would “cause a downgrade of global growth expectations or maybe even a global growth scare,” Gundlach told FORBES earlier in the year.
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