‘Trump Trade’: Election news leads to biggest 1-day stock market gain in 2 years

(NEW YORK) — The “Trump Trade” was in overdrive Wednesday, making it one for the history books on Wall Street with record finishes for all three major stock indices.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rocketed 3.6%, its biggest one day jump since November 2022. The S&P 500 shot up 2.5% while the Nasdaq climbed nearly 3%.

The biggest winners were companies and sectors that investors are betting will benefit from President-elect Trump’s policies.

Bank stocks, including JP Morgan Chase (JPM), Wells Fargo (WFC), and Bank of America (BAC) rallied on the promise of lower taxes and less regulation. The small-cap Russell 2000 Index (RUT), which includes some regional banks, soared nearly 6%.

It was the biggest surge for the U.S. dollar since 2020, and Carl Icahn, the activist investor and billionaire, said it will lead to less regulation and more mergers and acquisition.

Elon Musk was perhaps the day’s biggest winner. Shares of his Tesla Corporation (TSLA) rocketed nearly 15%. The world’s wealthiest person has been a staunch Trump proponent, donating more than $130 million toward Trump’s election efforts. In his victory speech, the president-elect referred to Musk as a “super genius” and has promised him a role in his administration.

“The biggest positive from a Trump win would be for Tesla and Musk,” wrote Dan Ives, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Wedbush. “We believe a Trump presidency would be an overall negative for the EV industry as likely the EV rebates/tax incentives get pulled. However, for Tesla we see this as a huge positive. Tesla has the scale and scope that is unmatched in the EV industry and this dynamic could give Musk and Tesla a clear competitive advantage in a non-EV subsidy environment, coupled by likely higher China tariffs that would continue to push away cheaper Chinese EV players from flooding the US market,” Ives wrote in a research note.

The cryptocurrency market also cheered Trump’s return to the White House. Bitcoin (BTCUSD) notched a record close, climbing above $75,000. Trump has said he wants the U.S. to be the “crypto capital of the planet” and plans to create a “strategic reserve of bitcoin.”

In September, he even launched his own crypto platform, World Liberty Financial, a new venture with family members to trade cryptocurrencies.

Donald Trump saw his personal wealth balloon during Wednesday’s stock market rally, at least on paper. Shares of his Trump Media and Technology Group (DJT), the parent company of his social media platform Truth Social, soared more than 30% at the market’s open but pulled back considerably to finish just 6% higher. Still, that gave the company a market cap of about $7.2 billion, with Trump’s majority stake worth about $4.1 billion.