US Dollar and Asian Stocks Rise as the FBI Clears Clinton Again

The political drama of the current US election to see who will sit in the Oval Office after Barack Obama continues. A gift that keeps on giving towards financial market volatility and a gift that will keep coming even after elections on Tuesday.

During early Asian and Pacific Rim trading hours, today, the US Dollar as well as US stock futures surged higher after news emanated from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and its Director James Comey, that the new batch of found emails against Democratic candidate, Hillary Rodham Clinton, showed no new acts of criminality in relation to her use of a private email server when she was secretary of state.

This position is similar to the conclusion the FBI reached back in July but decided to reopen its investigation last week. The announcement roiled the Clinton election campaign and sent shockwaves through polls and the global financial markets. The agency now says they have zero evidence of criminal behavior in the new batch of Clinton emails and Director Comey told Congress that his agency found anything new to alter its original conclusion.

The FBI had reached the above conclusion, that while Clinton was careless with handling classified documents and emails, she was not criminally liable.

This morning, the US Dollar climbed over one percent against the Japanese yen and the Swiss franc. The euro also slipped, by a similar amount against the almighty Buck after the story broke clearing Clinton of further wrong doing.

The only exception to the renewed US Dollar strength was against the Mexican peso. The Peso was up two percent against the Dollar in early Asian trade this morning.

The Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton is seen by the global financial markets as the status quo candidate for not only the American economy, but the global economy, as well. She is perceived as more of a known quantity in the White House than the Republican candidate Donald Trump.

Equity markets in Asian and the Pacific also posted nice gains this morning. The Australian benchmark, the S&P ASX 200 was up 0.8 percent. Australian stocks retraced earlier losses of 0.5 percent before the news. In Japan, the recently opened Nikkei 225 was up over one percent. Japanese shares were up 1.3 percent at the time of this report.