(Bloomberg) — The dollar rose slowly in Asian trading as markets judged former President Donald Trump ahead in the first U.S. presidential debate.
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A gauge of dollar strength rose as much as 0.2% on Friday before stalling, with the U.S. currency on course for a sixth straight weekly gain. President Joe Biden breezed through early exchanges in the debate, a performance that could fuel concerns about his ability to defeat Trump in November’s election.
“Based on reactions so far, markets think President Trump is ‘winning’ the debate,” said Carol Kong, strategist at Commonwealth Bank of Australian in Sydney. “But it is still too early to draw a conclusion.”
Treasury yields rose, while U.S. stock futures posted modest gains. The Mexican peso fell almost 1% before paring its losses to 0.4%. Asian currencies were mostly stable.
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Sentiment in Asian stocks was largely upbeat, with most regional stock markets making gains during the debate. Chinese benchmarks recovered early losses and exited technical correction territory as traders saw the lack of hawkish comments on China as a positive surprise. The Hang Seng China Enterprises Index rose as much as 0.8%.
It is a “positive surprise for this part of the world, but only moderately so,” said Redmond Wong, chief market strategist at Saxo Capital Markets. The political consensus on dealing with China depends not only on the presidential candidates but also on Congress, he said, adding that there could be some escalation of tensions in the coming months.
The lack of aggressive comments about China was “probably a surprise, but anti-China is a unified, bipartisan position, so there’s probably not much to attack each other,” said Xin-Yao Ng, director of investments at abrdn.
(Updates with Asian stock reaction)
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