presidential election

Authored by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

For the French establishment, Sunday’s presidential election came close to a near-death experience. As the Duke of Wellington said of Waterloo, it was a “damn near-run thing.”

Neither candidate of the two major parties that have ruled France since Charles De Gaulle even made it into the runoff, an astonishing repudiation of France’s national elite.

Marine Le Pen of the National Front ran second with 21.5 percent of the vote. Emmanuel Macron of the new party En Marche! won 23.8 percent.

LePen Euro Frexit Panic Over – "For Now"

by John Stepek, Editor of Money Week

OK, drama’s over.

The French election has turned out pretty much exactly as expected.

After yesterday's violent gap up in stocks across the globe in response to the "expected" outcome from the French election, today the risk on sentiment has continued if to a lesser extent, with stocks in Europe, Asia all rising while S&P futures point to a higher open. Yen, gold decline, while the euro traded as high as 1.09 this morning before fading some gains; oil is up modestly.

Risk is definitely on this morning as European shares soar, led by French stocks and a new record high in Germany's Dax, after a "French relief rally" in which the first round of the country’s presidential elections prompted investors to bet that establishment candidate Emmanuel Macron will win a runoff vote next month, and who is seen as a 61% to 39% favorite to defeat Le Pen according to the latest just released Opinionway poll.

For those who may have missed yesterday's events, here is a quick recap from DB:

The risk of a Eurozone breakdown now appears to be taken off the table after a French election that has led to a dramatic repricing in European risk assets. And yet the outcome - which was largely expected - has prompted Bloomberg's Richard Bresow to muse just how much was truly priced in: