Stocks Soar, Dollar Jumps as Trump’s Win Reverberates Through Markets
The Dow surges to biggest gain in two years, with bond yields and bitcoin also posting sharp climbs
4 min
Donald Trump ’s election victory powered the Dow Jones Industrial Average to its biggest gain in two years, with a broad market rally lifting shares of banks, industrial companies and small-cap firms that are expected to benefit from continued economic expansion.
The gains were widely distributed as Wall Street bet that Trump’s promises of deregulation and tax cuts will further ignite an economy that already has posted strong gains in recent years. But sectors that were expected to benefit from Democratic policies, such as electric-vehicle companies and clean-energy related industries, declined sharply.
The promise of four years of Republican rule drove the latest rise in Treasury yields, reflecting expectations of stronger growth and inflation, while gold prices fell as fears that the election results would be contested and spark social unrest weren’t realised.
“The markets are now trading full-on Trump trade,” said Stephen Dainton , a senior executive at Barclays who oversees the lender’s investment bank including its large trading division.
Big winners included banks, which investors bet were poised to benefit from reduced regulation and a fresh acceleration in growth. Shares of JPMorgan Chase , the nation’s largest lender, climbed 11% to a new record. Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs both rose more than 12%.
The prospect of lighter regulation and protective tariffs helped drive gains in industrials, with equipment maker Caterpillar rising more than 8% to a new all-time high and 3M adding 5%. Domestic steelmakers Nucor and Steel Dynamics gained 16% and 13%, respectively. Railroads, including Norfolk Southern and CSX , surged.
Bitcoin rose as much as 9% and flirted with $75,000, topping a previous record from March. Trump has said that he wants to make the U.S. the “crypto capital of the planet” and has pledged to create a “strategic bitcoin reserve.”
At the same time, traders also sought out companies and assets they expect to suffer during a second Trump administration.
Fears of trade wars drove down shares of ocean freight firms, including Denmark’s A.P. Moller-Maersk and Germany’s Hapag-Lloyd . Copper prices had their worst day in more than two years, dropping 5.1% as metals traders in New York reconsidered demand forecasts that hinge on the Chinese economy and the clean-energy boom.
Investors’ belief that Trump may break with the Biden administration’s push into renewable energy and electric vehicles hit companies as far away as South Korea. LG Energy Solution fell roughly 7%, as did other local EV battery makers, and Hanwha Solutions, which makes solar panels, dropped by more than 8%. In the U.S., First Solar fell 11% while Enphase Energy lost 17%.
Shares of Tesla , the electric-vehicle maker helmed by Trump ally and donor Elon Musk , bucked the trend, climbing 15%.
Investors sold bonds, driving yields higher and widening the gap between yields on ordinary Treasurys and those on inflation-protected Treasurys. That is a sign they think that the policies of a second Trump term could put upward pressure on inflation.
Many investors also believe that Trump’s tax-cut-heavy policies will add to the deficit, with the threat of a larger supply of Treasurys helping push down bond prices. The yield on the 10-year Treasury topped 4.4% for the first time since July.
That hit firms and investments that are sensitive to higher bond yields. The S&P 500’s consumer-staples sector declined 1.7% and the utilities segment lost 0.6% The real-estate sector sank 3.4%. The country’s largest home builder, D.R. Horton , dropped nearly 5% and Zillow Group fell about 7%.
Surging yields intensified a climb in the U.S. dollar, which was also boosted by the prospect of rising tariffs. Economists say tariffs can lift the U.S. currency by hurting the economies of foreign countries and discouraging Americans from spending on imported goods.
The WSJ Dollar Index, which measures the U.S. dollar against a basket of 16 currencies, rose around 1.3%. The Mexican peso lost as much as 3.4% against the dollar to its lowest level since August 2022, according to Dow Jones Market Data, before recovering. Trump recently said he could impose 200% tariffs on vehicles made in the country. The potential for tariffs also drove down the Chinese yuan.
Early wins by Trump in key states assuaged fears that it could take days or weeks for the election to be called. The Cboe Volatility Index—known as the VIX, or the market’s fear gauge—plunged to its lowest level since late September.
The relative calm had investors hoping more gains lie ahead. The S&P 500 had already risen 21% through Election Day, its best performance in a presidential election year since 1936, when Franklin Roosevelt was in office. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 12%, its best election-year performance since 1996, when Bill Clinton was in the White House.
“There’s a lot of relief that there’s a clear-cut outcome and that markets can move on to things that are quite frankly more important than who sits in the White House,” said Ross Mayfield, investment strategist at Baird.
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Records keep falling in 2025 as harbourfront, beachfront and blue-chip estates crowd the top of the market.
A divide has opened in the tech job market between those with artificial-intelligence skills and everyone else.
JPMorgan Chase has a ‘strong bias’ against adding staff, while Walmart is keeping its head count flat. Major employers are in a new, ultra lean era.
3 min
It’s the corporate gamble of the moment: Can you run a company, increasing sales and juicing profits, without adding people?
American employers are increasingly making the calculation that they can keep the size of their teams flat—or shrink through layoffs—without harming their businesses.
Part of that thinking is the belief that artificial intelligence will be used to pick up some of the slack and automate more processes. Companies are also hesitant to make any moves in an economy many still describe as uncertain.
JPMorgan Chase’s chief financial officer told investors recently that the bank now has a “very strong bias against having the reflective response” to hire more people for any given need. Aerospace and defense company RTX boasted last week that its sales rose even without adding employees.
Goldman Sachs , meanwhile, sent a memo to staffers this month saying the firm “will constrain head count growth through the end of the year” and reduce roles that could be more efficient with AI. Walmart , the nation’s largest private employer, also said it plans to keep its head count roughly flat over the next three years, even as its sales grow.
“If people are getting more productive, you don’t need to hire more people,” Brian Chesky , Airbnb’s chief executive, said in an interview. “I see a lot of companies pre-emptively holding the line, forecasting and hoping that they can have smaller workforces.”
Airbnb employs around 7,000 people, and Chesky says he doesn’t expect that number to grow much over the next year. With the help of AI, he said he hopes that “the team we already have can get considerably more work done.”
Many companies seem intent on embracing a new, ultralean model of staffing, one where more roles are kept unfilled and hiring is treated as a last resort. At Intuit , every time a job comes open, managers are pushed to justify why they need to backfill it, said Sandeep Aujla , the company’s chief financial officer. The new rigor around hiring helps combat corporate bloat.
“That typical behavior that settles in—and we’re all guilty of it—is, historically, if someone leaves, if Jane Doe leaves, I’ve got to backfill Jane,” Aujla said in an interview. Now, when someone quits, the company asks: “Is there an opportunity for us to rethink how we staff?”
Intuit has chosen not to replace certain roles in its finance, legal and customer-support functions, he said. In its last fiscal year, the company’s revenue rose 16% even as its head count stayed flat, and it is planning only modest hiring in the current year.
The desire to avoid hiring or filling jobs reflects a growing push among executives to see a return on their AI spending. On earnings calls, mentions of ROI and AI investments are increasing, according to an analysis by AlphaSense, reflecting heightened interest from analysts and investors that companies make good on the millions they are pouring into AI.
Many executives hope that software coding assistants and armies of digital agents will keep improving—even if the current results still at times leave something to be desired.
The widespread caution in hiring now is frustrating job seekers and leading many employees within organizations to feel stuck in place, unable to ascend or take on new roles, workers and bosses say.
Inside many large companies, HR chiefs also say it is becoming increasingly difficult to predict just how many employees will be needed as technology takes on more of the work.
Some employers seem to think that fewer employees will actually improve operations.
Meta Platforms this past week said it is cutting 600 jobs in its AI division, a move some leaders hailed as a way to cut down on bureaucracy.
“By reducing the size of our team, fewer conversations will be required to make a decision, and each person will be more load-bearing and have more scope and impact,” Alexandr Wang , Meta’s chief AI officer, wrote in a memo to staff seen by The Wall Street Journal.
Though layoffs haven’t been widespread through the economy, some companies are making cuts. Target on Thursday said it would cut about 1,000 corporate employees, and close another 800 open positions, totaling around 8% of its corporate workforce. Michael Fiddelke , Target’s incoming CEO, said in a memo sent to staff that too “many layers and overlapping work have slowed decisions, making it harder to bring ideas to life.”
A range of other employers, from the electric-truck maker Rivian to cable and broadband provider Charter Communications , have announced their own staff cuts in recent weeks, too.
Operating with fewer people can still pose risks for companies by straining existing staffers or hurting efforts to develop future leaders, executives and economists say. “It’s a bit of a double-edged sword,” said Matthew Martin , senior U.S. economist at Oxford Economics. “You want to keep your head count costs down now—but you also have to have an eye on the future.”
A divide has opened in the tech job market between those with artificial-intelligence skills and everyone else.
Records keep falling in 2025 as harbourfront, beachfront and blue-chip estates crowd the top of the market.
