The US election shows that what markets really like is certainty

The tight result in the US election shows that political stalemate could well be good for the markets, says Merryn Somerset Webb.

Wall Street
Markets like stability
(Image credit: © ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images)

Early last week everyone knew what would be bullish for the market: certainty. A full-on Blue Wave would have been great – perhaps a bit less business-friendly than a second Trump victory, but think of the stimulus! Free money fountains galore. A Trump win would have been pretty bullish too. No Covid lockdowns, no tax rise and no pesky ramp up in regulation.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.