Currency investors are betting that President Donald Trump will lose the upcoming election, as a new Bloomberg report explains. In 2016, these investors were buying the ruble (Russian currency) and selling off the peso (Mexican currency) on the basis of the notion that a Trump presidency might benefit Russia and disadvantage Mexico. Now, the opposite transactions are taking place — investors are buying up the peso and selling off the ruble. These developments correspond with an increasingly bright position for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden in available polling data. As of Saturday morning, Biden leads Trump by 10.2 percent in the FiveThirtyEight average of national-level polls.
London-based money manager Paul McNamara commented:
‘Trump is very keen to ingratiate himself with Russia, so what’s good for him is good for Russia. Biden looks more likely to go back to a rules-based global trade regime, with Mexico and China potential beneficiaries.’
In the past three months, the peso has risen in value by 6 percent against the dollar, while the ruble sunk by 8 percent against the dollar during that timeframe. The good fortunes for the peso’s value have emerged “as investors bet that increased stimulus under a Biden presidency will help boost Mexican exports to the U.S.,” Bloomberg notes. The ruble’s decline signifies that “markets [are] predicting that a Democrat in the White House will more likely impose harsher sanctions on Russia,” the publication adds. As mentioned, there’s an increasingly likely chance of a Democrat winning the White House — FiveThirtyEight gives Biden an 85 percent chance of winning as of early Saturday.
Trump has definitely sent the economy into a tailspin while he’s been in office — his administration has made a definitive imprint. From the trade war with China whose costs have been frequently borne by Americans via import taxes to the monumental unemployment that has emerged in the wake of the Trump administration’s failure to systematically contain the Coronavirus, the Trump presidency has been an economic wreck. The stock market gains that Trump spends so much time touting mean basically nothing substantive for the millions of Americans who have no financial stake in the stock market.
