(Bloomberg) -- Wall Street billionaire Michael Novogratz sprawled out on his bed with two phones and a pair of laptops as the election maps began to fill in blue and red Tuesday night. At his side was a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, another of Champagne and a pint of lemon sherbet.
“Trading like a banshee,” Novogratz said of his plans for the evening. He was expecting to work long into the night, as one state after another was called and financial markets fluttered in response.
Then: Georgia. Voters there appeared to be breaking for Trump. The dam was giving way.
Novo, as the former Goldman Sachs executive is known, tore up his gameplan and got some sleep. By the time he woke up, the US – and the financial world – were still coming to grips with the news that Donald Trump had been elected the 47th president, in a political comeback for the ages.
For finance lawyer Richard Farley, all it took was a single text around midnight. When his old friend Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s message came through, it didn’t even have any words — just five thumbs-up. Farley left the Women’s National Republican Club in Midtown Manhattan, got in his car, and drove home to his gated community outside the city.
“It’s over,” the chair of the leveraged finance group at Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP said in the early hours of Wednesday. It was late, but he sounded buoyant.
Across Wall Street, investors, bankers, executives and lawyers had spent the last few hours waiting, drinking, fretting, trading and arguing. Now it was clear: Trump had defeated Kamala Harris and was headed back to the White House, again. For many, their night was just beginning.
The populist billionaire’s return to power — after being found liable for sexual assault and convicted in a New York state court of 34 felony counts — will impact everyone in the world’s biggest economy, not just those running it. And yet few are better positioned to benefit from the tax cuts and deregulation he’s promised than the power brokers within global finance.
They had spent the week planning to hunker down for days and game out their next moves as one of the most polarizing presidential elections in the nation’s history unfolded. Instead, Trump’s victory speech was over before the London Stock Exchange even opened for trading on Wednesday.
Markets erupted, vindicating investors who rode the so-called Trump Trade in recent weeks. The dollar soared, cryptocurrencies climbed and the stocks of the nation’s biggest banks jumped.
Here’s how it unfolded, hour by hour, across global Wall Street.
6:30 p.m., Wall Street, Downtown Manhattan
Kathy Wylde stepped into the New York Stock Exchange as it opened its election-night party. On her way in, the head of the Partnership for New York City saw a prominent chief of a hedge fund. “I said, ‘Do you have a big bet on this race?’ He said, ‘$9 billion,’” said Wylde, who’s spent decades around New York’s billionaire class. “But he didn’t say which way.” Maps were passed around with colored pencils for filling in states blue or red.
Elsewhere in Manhattan, BNY’s chief growth officer, Akash Shah, dashed into his apartment after a day of talking to clients who were asking him to read “the pulse” of more than $50 trillion in assets the firm has under custody and administration. He couldn’t.
8:00 p.m., West 51st Street, Midtown Manhattan
Cheers went up inside the Women’s National Republican Club as the AP called South Carolina, a reliably red state, for Trump. “God Bless the U.S.A.,” a signature Trump campaign song, rang out over the sound system. “I vote with my pocketbook, my wallet,” said Chris Squassi, a wealth manager at Janney Montgomery Scott in New York. His other big concerns: illegal immigration and what he said is the crime that comes with it.
8:02 p.m., East 46th Street, Midtown Manhattan
Philanthropist Laurie Tisch was inside Aretsky’s Patroon, a clubby steakhouse known for its martinis and A-list crowd when Florida was called for Trump. She said she was starting to feel nauseous in the midst of the election party hosted by Wall Street dealmaker Blair Effron, a longtime Harris supporter and co-founder of Centerview Partners. His name had been floated for Harris’ administration, and he was hosting the party with one-time business rival and fellow Democratic supporter, Roger Altman, founder of the boutique investment bank Evercore. Tisch had downed a large box of Good & Plenty candy, but she said everyone’s stomachs were in knots.
8:05 p.m. New York, 9:05 a.m. Singapore
A macro hedge fund manager, having already bet on a stronger dollar, placed more orders for the greenback, one of the most popular Trump trades.
Meanwhile, Texas native Jeff Fisher, a former Wall Street prime broker, told bartenders at his watch party in Singapore’s Marina Bay to dye the beer red or blue, with people ordering based on who they expected to win. “It’s a red wave in Singapore,” he said.
8:15 p.m. New York, 10:15 p.m. Sao Paulo
Decio Nascimento, founder of macro hedge fund Norbury Partners, was trading from Brazil when his models pointed to a greater than 90% chance of a Trump win. He ramped up bets on energy, banking and defense stocks, while cutting exposure to long-duration bonds.
8:30 p.m., Manhattan’s Upper East Side
The vibe was tense in Billy Hult’s household. The head of Tradeweb, one of the biggest electronic-trading platforms favored by fixed-income investors, was getting regular briefs from staff. Everyone was still sussing out which way the night would head before putting on bets with conviction, he said. He recalled his 2016 election night, dining with Goldman Sachs investment bank boss Ashok Varadhan at French bistro Cherche Midi because a Hillary Clinton win was deemed a foregone conclusion. Not so this time.
Elsewhere in the neighborhood, a hedge fund manager was taking refuge in the yard of his townhouse, smoking a cigar, after a heated conversation with his wife and daughters. They support Harris. He doesn’t. The manager said rates were pointing to a Trump victory.
8:57 p.m., Palm Beach, Florida
Wilbur Ross had just the right pair of embroidered slippers for election night. From a shoe collection that earns a photo in his new memoir, “Risks and Returns,” Trump’s former commerce secretary picked footwear decorated with an elephant. The 86-year-old was on his way from dinner at the secretive Everglades Club to the Trump watch party at the Palm Beach County Convention Center. He predicted it could be days before a clear result, but his mood was upbeat. “Nobody in Palm Beach is really from Palm Beach,” Ross added. “So people were getting calls from where they had come from. And the calls were very encouraging. But it’s early.”
9:12 p.m., West 51st Street, Midtown Manhattan
There was something strange about Tuesday for Farley, the Kramer Levin lawyer. Nobody had called to talk politics. Then he got a text message from a client who said he was at Mar-a-Lago, right by Trump himself. The mood there? “Cautiously optimistic.” And Farley heard from another client who’d be watching a Terminator movie until 10:30 p.m., when he’d turn on the news. “It’s like an NBA basketball game,” Farley said at the gathering in the Women’s National Republican Club. “Nothing matters until the last 10 minutes.”
9:30 p.m., Astor Place, Lower Manhattan
In downtown Manhattan, guests had begun to dribble out of an event hosted by investor Jonathan Soros at Joe’s Pub. British-born comedian Simon Fraser exited the stage after providing laughs that quelled — for a bit — anxiety felt by Democratic-leaning attendees.
9:40 p.m., Tribeca, Lower Manhattan
Novogratz, the former Goldmanite and founder of blockchain firm Galaxy Digital, had “poured a fortune” into Democratic politics over the past four years, and his wife was rooting for Harris. He was left in a weird position: A Trump win could mean a massive wealth gain for him. “Early on there was a little bit of volatility. Now it’s just kind of waiting,” he said. “There’s not a macro trader worth a grain of salt that’s not in front of a screen right now.”
10:00 p.m., New York
Markets have nearly embraced a Trump win. Bitcoin hit a record high. Ten-year Treasury yields and the dollar have soared. Polymarket puts the former president at 84% odds of winning back the White House; on PredictIt, he’s up to about 76%.
10:11 p.m., New York
A top executive at one of the world’s biggest finance firms, whose career has brought him as close to Washington power as just about anyone on Wall Street, came home after going out to dinner and a party. He was getting inundated by panicked Harris fans in the corporate and political world, who were reaching out to him for assurance, craving upbeat tidbits. He told them to focus on Georgia, where the race was close and the results from left-leaning Atlanta hadn’t yet arrived. His fellow Democrats tend to be anxious types, he said. His message: Wait and see what happens.
11 p.m. New York, 3 p.m. Sydney
Across the world, on her trading floor in Sydney, sat Kellie Wood, well versed in navigating elections. The head of fixed income for Schroders Plc in Australia said “we are short US rates and long inflation.” She put about a 90% chance of a Trump victory at this point, taking the majority of swing states. “The US bond market called it early in Australian hours — selling off on the open,” she said.
12 a.m. New York, 2 p.m. Tokyo
As the dollar’s rally began to stall, word swirled on trading floors in Asia that hedge funds were taking profit on bullish greenback positions. In an office tower in Tokyo’s main financial district, distracted Neuberger Berman workers were checking phones or glued to computer screens. “If the market reacted negatively and sold off, of course we’d be looking at situations opportunistically,” Kei Okamura said. “But at the moment it’s a reverse situation. Today’s just going to be really tricky.”
12:37 a.m. Palm Beach
After TV networks called the battleground states of North Carolina and Georgia for Trump, he made his way over to address the nation at the Palm Beach Convention Center. Some investors were already looking to what the future holds. Jay Pelosky worried of long-term downside for the dollar, “the most over-owned asset in the world,” said the co-founder of TPW Investment Management. “We’re looking at blowout deficits, we’re looking at a Fed perhaps cornered.”
1 a.m. Cayman Islands
The election wasn’t the only storm brewing. Hurricane Rafael barreled through the Caribbean in the early hours of Wednesday morning, unleashing a downpour on the Cayman Islands and Jamaica as the storm made its way toward Cuba.
Edouard de Langlade, who runs his own $1 billion macro hedge fund from Pfaffikon, Switzerland, normally has an office in the Cayman Islands that helps him maintain round-the-clock coverage for his trades. He decided to spend the night in his office and deal with brokers directly as the storm threatened to upend those operations.
It’s “not ideal,” he said.
2 a.m. New York, 11 a.m. Dubai
A Dubai-based trader at a major macro hedge fund slept in on Tuesday morning to ensure he was rested up for the night ahead. As the votes piled up in key swing states in Donald Trump’s favor, markets erupted: US stocks surged, the dollar posted its biggest gain against major currencies since 2020, Treasury bonds tumbled, and Bitcoin soared to a record. The trader didn’t know when he’d sleep next.
Indeed, it was a sleepless night for many traders around the world. Millennium Management, the $69.5 billion hedge fund behemoth that has more than 330 investment teams around the world, told employees its Americas execution desk would be staffed all night long.
2:30 a.m. Palm Beach
Trump began addressing supporters at his party. He had won Pennsylvania, effectively ending Harris’ hopes of winning the presidency. At this point in the night, Republicans’ strength had already delivered them the Senate, flipping seats in Ohio and West Virginia while successfully fending off challenges in Texas and Nebraska.
“I will not rest until we have delivered the strong, safe, and prosperous America that our children deserve and that you deserve,” Trump said, adding that “we’re going to help our country heal.”
3:45 a.m. New York, 8:45 a.m. London
An eerie calm settled over global markets. Less than an hour after the open of the London Stock Exchange, traders began betting that the recent surge in market volatility would fade.
One London-based macro hedge fund chief pointed to benchmark yields on Treasuries only being up a tenth of a percentage point — to him, proof that markets were comfortable with Trump’s win. A new world was opening, but it was similar to one he’d seen before.
4 a.m. New York
Markets began to focus on the day’s winners and losers. Trump Media & Technology Group Corp. surged in early trading in New York. Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. soared as investors bet that Trump would make good on his promises of rolling back regulations.
Tesla Inc. climbed as investors wagered Elon Musk’s carmaker will benefit from the world’s richest man backing Republicans with more than $130 million in spending.
5:30 a.m. Palm Beach
Trump emerges as the president-elect as multiple television networks called the election with the former president ahead in every key swing state.
9 a.m. New York, 7 a.m. Scottsdale
Conor O’Callaghan, who runs structured product sales at BTIG and ran for office himself earlier this year, processed the results from his hometown of Scottsdale, Arizona, where he moved from New York during the pandemic.
“As Democrats, we need to take a long hard look in the mirror,” said O’Callaghan, who lost in the Democratic primary in his bid to unseat his district’s Congressional representative. “We only have ourselves to blame. We failed to make the sale to the American people.”
9:30 a.m., Wall Street
Executives from a unit at Academy Securities called the Geopolitical Intelligence Group smiled, clapped, whooped and fist-bumped as they rang the bell to open trading at the NYSE. The S&P 500 Index hit a record.
--With assistance from Gillian Tan, Adam Haigh, Ruth Carson, Takashi Nakamichi, Lisa Du, Loukia Gyftopoulou, Bei Hu, Katherine Doherty, Nishant Kumar and William Shaw.
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