Stock futures jumped and Treasury yields surged in evening trading Tuesday, with investors piling into trades that might pay off if former President Donald Trump were to win the presidential election.
Shares of Trump Media & Technology , known as DJT, soared. The U.S. dollar, bitcoin and shares of Tesla —bets that are also linked to Trump’s prospects—rose, too.
Futures linked to all three major stock indexes climbed, with S&P 500 futures up 1.2%. Those tied to the Russell 2000 index of small companies, which tend to be the most sensitive to the economy’s ups and downs, added 2.6%. Investors dumped bonds, sending the yield on the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury note above 4.4%, according to Tradeweb, up from its Tuesday closing level of 4.290%.
The gap between yields on ordinary Treasurys and those on inflation-protected Treasurys also widened, a sign that investors think that the policies of a second Trump term could put upward pressure on inflation.
Election results late Tuesday evening showed positive signs for Trump , though several battleground states had yet to be called by major news outlets. Republicans looked poised to take back control of the Senate, picking up seats in West Virginia and Ohio. Some investors keyed in on signs that Vice President Kamala Harris lagged President Biden’s 2020 performance in certain counties, helping drive the Trump trade before many of the votes nationwide were even counted.
The WSJ Dollar Index, which measures the U.S. dollar against a basket of 16 currencies, was recently up around 1.6%. The Mexican peso tumbled against the dollar, losing 2.9% and falling to its lowest level of the year. Concern that a potential Trump administration’s tariffs could curb demand for Mexican exports has dented the currency in recent weeks. undefined undefined Bitcoin prices flirted with $75,000 and topped their previous record high 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.” Tesla shares jumped—chief Elon Musk has given tens of millions of dollars to a pro-Trump super PAC and emerged as one of Trump’s most vocal supporters.
“The popular Trump trades are all working,” said Danny Kirsch, head of options at Piper Sandler, on Tuesday evening.
Stocks have steadily climbed this year ahead of the election, an event that often stokes stock-market fireworks. The S&P 500 has risen 21%, on track for its best performance in a presidential election year since 1936, when Franklin Roosevelt was in office. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 12%, its best election-year performance since 1996, when Bill Clinton was in the White House.
A win for Trump would promise an unpredictable mixture of policies. Tax cuts and regulatory rollbacks could boost corporate profits, but many economists have said higher tariffs and stricter immigration enforcement under Trump could slow economic growth and lift consumer prices.
One focus of investors has been the outlook for the federal budget deficit. In the weeks leading up to the election, a selloff in U.S. Treasurys initially spurred by strong economic data gained extra momentum as a win for Trump looked more likely.
Many investors have believed that Trump’s tax-cut-heavy policies would add more to the deficit than Harris’s agenda, although the government’s borrowing needs could increase regardless of the election outcome. The threat of a larger supply of Treasurys helped push down bond prices, driving the yield on the benchmark 10-year note above 4.3% in recent days for the first time since early July.
One measure of bond-market volatility, the ICE BofAML MOVE index, jumped to its highest level of the year on Monday, a sign that traders are positioning for bigger swings ahead.
“What is being priced in is some fear of tariffs and fiscal expansion,” said Sonal Desai , chief investment officer of Franklin Templeton Fixed Income.
Arthur Bass, a managing director at Wedbush Securities, said he had noticed traders placing bearish bets on bonds through the derivatives market in recent sessions, positioning for the selloff to continue.
Some investors said they were reluctant to place large wagers ahead of the election. Many have been caught flat-footed by surprise market reactions to big political events, such as Trump’s win in 2016.
“Even if you tell me the outcome, I’m still not going to make a big bet,” said Zhiwei Ren, a portfolio manager at Penn Mutual Asset Management. “We’re not making any bets at this point, we are just hedging.”
Because the outcome of the race might be unknown for several days, some traders are betting on big market moves throughout the week. Options traders are wagering on a roughly 1.8% swing in one of the largest exchange-traded funds tracking the S&P 500 on Wednesday and similar daily moves the rest of the week, according to data from Option Research & Technology Services.
Stocks have thrived in different political environments. The S&P 500 climbed 64% from when the 2016 presidential election was called for Trump to his electoral defeat to President Biden in 2020. The index has since gained an additional 65% through Tuesday’s close.
Write to Gunjan Banerji at gunjan.banerji@wsj.com and Sam Goldfarb at sam.goldfarb@wsj.com