Asian markets, oil prices and dollar tumble as Donald Trump leads race to White House

Asian stock market indices were trading lower on Wednesday (9 November) with the Shanghai Composite down 0.96% at 3,117.61 as of 3.18am GMT. This was amid reports that Republican candidate Donald Trump was performing better-than-expected in the race to the White House.

While most pre-election polls had indicated that Democrat Hillary Clinton would lead Trump, Tuesday's early results were in stark contrast.

At 10.48pm EST on 8 November (3.48am GMT 9 November), Dow Jones mini was down 3.36% or 615 points at 17670, while the S&P 500 mini was down 3.86% or 82.50 points at 2053.

The US dollar also took a hit as the results progressed and declined against the yen, euro and Swiss franc. The dollar fell as much as 3.5% against the yen, which was the biggest intraday decline since the Brexit vote, according to Bloomberg. It was down 1.8% against the euro and 2% against the Swiss franc.

Oil prices also declined as traders opined that a win for Trump would be bad for world trade. Brent Crude was trading lower by 3.54% at $44.41 (£35.62) a barrel, WTI Crude oil prices were down 4.18% at $43.10 a barrel.

Kathy Lien, MD of FX strategy for BK Asset Management was cited by the Guardian as commenting, "US elections don't normally elicit major market volatility but the problem in 2016 is that for better part of this year, market participants did not consider a Trump victory realistic and now that the election is too close to call they are bailing out of US assets and rushing to protect their portfolios."

Indices in the region were trading as follows at 4.09am GMT:

According to projections from NBC News, Donald Trump had won in the states of Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Indiana, West Virginia, South Carolina, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Texas, Wyoming, Louisiana and Kentucky.

On the other hand Clinton was projected as a winner in ten states, including Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington DC.