Rich investors in Europe and Asia are betting on stocks that will rise if a particular candidate wins the US election next week, and one firm says more than 80 percent of its customers’ dollars are wagering on Hillary Clinton.
The trades are coming in the form of bonds whose performance is tied to a group of shares. Swiss bank Vontobel Holding AG, for example, is selling structured notes linked to stocks that should perform well if Donald Trump wins, and other similar debt that would benefit from a Clinton victory. Eric Blattmann, head of public distribution of financial products at the bank and asset manager, reported sales of at least $10 million.
Leonteq AG, a Swiss provider of structured products, has seen “strong interest” for similar notes in Singapore, said Frank Troise, head of digital distribution in the Asian city-state. He declined to provide sales figures, but said that more than four-fifths of the notes his firm has sold have bet on Clinton becoming the 45th President of the United States.
“Investors are voting with their wallets,” Troise said. “The expectation is that markets will rally substantially if Clinton does win.”
Demand for Clinton notes echoes what polls and betting markets are forecasting. Clinton’s odds of winning were around 67 percent on Thursday in New York, according to poll aggregator FiveThirtyEight. Her chances have fallen from 82 percent on Oct. 27, the day before the US Federal Bureau of Investigation said it had reopened its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal email server. The probability of a Trump victory implied by offshore bookmakers’ odds was around 31 percent on Friday morning in Asia, according to odds comparison site Oddschecker.
