America is in a state of collective shock after last night’s surprise election victory for Republican candidate Donald Trump.
As results came in and Trump’s path to the White House was paved by electoral votes, markets tumbled. Markets do not enjoy instability: Trump’s volatile remarks regarding trade, visas and foreign relations will come as anathema to many on Wall Street.
Today, however, markets rallied. While there is still some degree of global panic surrounding the vote, domestically it is a different story. Corporates such as private prisons, oil and pharmaceutical companies enjoying big spikes. By tonight the Dow Jones, S&P 500 and Nasdaq were all up.
Tech shares in the US and North American sectors were down by 0.26 and 0.39% respectively. Telecommunications shares, however, were up by a whopping 2.20% at 3.15pm today.
Individually the technology sector has been a mixed bag, post-election. Apple recovered to around its previous close. Alphabet closed today with a 0.79% loss on yesterday, while Amazon failed to do as well at 2.01% down. Microsoft lost value to the tune of 0.5%.
Facebook also felt a significant shockwave in its valuation, dropping by a percentage point after Trump, whose spats with the tech community have been well-documented, eased to the 270 electoral votes required to become president-elect.
The biggest losers included GoPro (-4.14%). But that loss was more likely due to its recall of the Karma drone, announced late Tuesday. TripAdvisor, too, fell 16.59% after releasing weak quarterly earnings.
However some firms bucked the trend. HP Inc closed 1.90% up; eBay almost gained 1% and Cisco Systems saw a slightly bigger uptick at 1.16%. Twitter was one of the day’s biggest winners, with a 4.08% surge in its price after an IPO on Monday that saw it gain 74% in value.
Perhaps the biggest share wobble has been felt in the renewable energy sector. The victory of Trump, a climate change denier, has understandably caused a big dip. Elon Musk’s Tesla, despite recently announcing its innovative solar roof tiles, dropped by 2.50%, while SolarCity felt a 4.03% hit.
Danish firm Vestas, the world’s largest producer of wind turbines, plummeted 14% upon news of the election, before recovering to a 6.6% loss this morning. Wind turbines currently enjoy heavy subsidies in the US.
That will likely change under Trump, who has planned an “energy revolution”, heavily reliant on fracking and oil production, which he promises will bring $50 trillion to the American economy. His manifesto makes no mention of green energy.