The Dow surges to biggest gain in two years, with bond yields and bitcoin also posting sharp climbs
4 min
Donald Trump ’s election victory powered the Dow Jones Industrial Average to its biggest gain in two years, with a broad market rally lifting shares of banks, industrial companies and small-cap firms that are expected to benefit from continued economic expansion.
The gains were widely distributed as Wall Street bet that Trump’s promises of deregulation and tax cuts will further ignite an economy that already has posted strong gains in recent years. But sectors that were expected to benefit from Democratic policies, such as electric-vehicle companies and clean-energy related industries, declined sharply.
The promise of four years of Republican rule drove the latest rise in Treasury yields, reflecting expectations of stronger growth and inflation, while gold prices fell as fears that the election results would be contested and spark social unrest weren’t realised.
“The markets are now trading full-on Trump trade,” said Stephen Dainton, a senior executive at Barclays who oversees the lender’s investment bank including its large trading division.
Big winners included banks, which investors bet were poised to benefit from reduced regulation and a fresh acceleration in growth. Shares of JPMorgan Chase , the nation’s largest lender, climbed 11% to a new record. Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs both rose more than 12%.
The prospect of lighter regulation and protective tariffs helped drive gains in industrials, with equipment maker Caterpillar rising more than 8% to a new all-time high and 3M adding 5%. Domestic steelmakers Nucor and Steel Dynamics gained 16% and 13%, respectively. Railroads, including Norfolk Southern and CSX , surged.
Bitcoin rose as much as 9% and flirted with $75,000, topping a previous record from March. Trump has said that he wants to make the U.S. the “crypto capital of the planet” and has pledged to create a “strategic bitcoin reserve.”
At the same time, traders also sought out companies and assets they expect to suffer during a second Trump administration.
Fears of trade wars drove down shares of ocean freight firms, including Denmark’s A.P. Moller-Maersk and Germany’s Hapag-Lloyd . Copper prices had their worst day in more than two years, dropping 5.1% as metals traders in New York reconsidered demand forecasts that hinge on the Chinese economy and the clean-energy boom.
Investors’ belief that Trump may break with the Biden administration’s push into renewable energy and electric vehicles hit companies as far away as South Korea. LG Energy Solution fell roughly 7%, as did other local EV battery makers, and Hanwha Solutions, which makes solar panels, dropped by more than 8%. In the U.S., First Solar fell 11% while Enphase Energy lost 17%.
Shares of Tesla , the electric-vehicle maker helmed by Trump ally and donor Elon Musk , bucked the trend, climbing 15%.
Investors sold bonds, driving yields higher and widening the gap between yields on ordinary Treasurys and those on inflation-protected Treasurys. That is a sign they think that the policies of a second Trump term could put upward pressure on inflation.
Many investors also believe that Trump’s tax-cut-heavy policies will add to the deficit, with the threat of a larger supply of Treasurys helping push down bond prices. The yield on the 10-year Treasury topped 4.4% for the first time since July.
That hit firms and investments that are sensitive to higher bond yields. The S&P 500’s consumer-staples sector declined 1.7% and the utilities segment lost 0.6% The real-estate sector sank 3.4%. The country’s largest home builder, D.R. Horton , dropped nearly 5% and Zillow Group fell about 7%.
Surging yields intensified a climb in the U.S. dollar, which was also boosted by the prospect of rising tariffs. Economists say tariffs can lift the U.S. currency by hurting the economies of foreign countries and discouraging Americans from spending on imported goods.
The WSJ Dollar Index, which measures the U.S. dollar against a basket of 16 currencies, rose around 1.3%. The Mexican peso lost as much as 3.4% against the dollar to its lowest level since August 2022, according to Dow Jones Market Data, before recovering. Trump recently said he could impose 200% tariffs on vehicles made in the country. The potential for tariffs also drove down the Chinese yuan.
Early wins by Trump in key states assuaged fears that it could take days or weeks for the election to be called. The Cboe Volatility Index—known as the VIX, or the market’s fear gauge—plunged to its lowest level since late September.
The relative calm had investors hoping more gains lie ahead. The S&P 500 had already risen 21% through Election Day, its best performance in a presidential election year since 1936, when Franklin Roosevelt was in office. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 12%, its best election-year performance since 1996, when Bill Clinton was in the White House.
“There’s a lot of relief that there’s a clear-cut outcome and that markets can move on to things that are quite frankly more important than who sits in the White House,” said Ross Mayfield, investment strategist at Baird.
BNW Developments has established a Sydney presence, joining Arada and Sobha Realty among the growing number of UAE developers pursuing Australian buyers and development opportunities.
The Australian leather house has opened an immersive four-day pop-up in Manhattan, unveiling its Bloom Collection and redefining what a product launch can look like.
AI-powered travel agents are challenging online booking platforms, but Airbnb’s exclusive listings and direct customer relationships could give it an edge. Its next challenge: turning repeat guests into loyal customers through stronger rewards and innovation.
3 min
AI agents like Muse can already find you the cheapest hotel room in Paris. But they can’t locate a cheaper version of that Catskills cabin you’ve been eyeing, because it might only be available on Airbnb ABNB -1.43%decrease.
Investors should pay attention to that distinction. When Meta Platforms META 3.38%increase launched its Muse agent last month, travel stocks including Booking Holdings BKNG -1.19%decrease, Expedia and Airbnb all fell sharply.
Airbnb, though, has a real chance to emerge as a winner from the upheaval. The catch: Its stock already reflects above-industry growth. To justify its valuation, Airbnb will need to turn repeat customers into loyal ones.
Online travel companies make much of their money by simplifying search and collecting fees on bookings. AI agents threaten that model.
But not all travel marketplaces are equally exposed. Booking and Expedia largely sell hotel rooms that travelers can also book directly or through competing sites. If an agent can find the same room elsewhere, it has little reason to favor either Booking or Expedia.
Booking and Expedia also sell sponsored listings that steer travelers toward particular properties. Wells Fargo estimates those will account for about 8% of Expedia’s revenue and a much higher percentage of profit next year.
Airbnb has more ways to adapt. More than half its listings are available only on its platform, and more than 90% of its traffic comes directly to its app or website.
The customer relationship doesn’t end after booking, either. Bernstein analyst Richard Clarke notes that 90% of Airbnb guests go on to message their hosts about arrival times, keys or local taxes, giving Airbnb a connection to both sides of the transaction.
How the companies have responded to the possible agentic future is telling.
Expedia quickly signed on as a Muse partner. Airbnb hasn’t, and Chief Executive Brian Chesky says AI chatbots have so far been a boon, sending customers to Airbnb’s website.
Chatbots might work for buying paper towels, he quipped at a Skift conference last month, but people enjoy planning trips. He argued that browsing dozens of homes isn’t something a text-based chatbot is well suited for.
Still, the AI jitters arrived just as Airbnb was persuading investors it deserved its pricey multiple. For years after its 2020 initial public offering, the stock—which trades around 25 to 30 times forward earnings—went nowhere. Investors saw a mature operator trading at a growth premium.
This year, Airbnb growth seems to be accelerating. The stock jumped in August after the company raised its full-year revenue-growth guidance with its second-quarter results. Wells Fargo analyst Ken Gawrelski credits a run of product improvements under a revamped leadership team.
Among the changes: letting guests reserve now and pay later, adding hotels, and a redesigned home page and app. Investors were also betting on what comes next, including thousands more hotels, car rentals and, eventually, advertising.
The irony is that some of those growth drivers push Airbnb closer to the kind of business Booking and Expedia run—the kind of business AI agents could threaten. Even if AI agents capture a large share of travel planning and booking, Airbnb would capture the demand. But it and others would slowly lose control over how customers find and choose properties.
That would undermine the advertising opportunity investors are counting on. The bigger point for Airbnb and other marketplaces is that losing control of customer acquisition could mean surrendering some of their pricing power and margins.
To bulletproof itself, Airbnb might look to another e-commerce giant that has so far kept AI agents at arm’s length: Amazon.
Like Amazon, Airbnb has a loyal customer base and hard-to-match supply. But it has nothing like Prime membership to make customers think twice before taking their business elsewhere.
That is where loyalty comes in. Business travelers stick with Hilton or Marriott because enough nights earn them perks. Leisure travelers rarely accumulate stays with one chain. Airbnb has millions of listings and plenty of repeat customers, but no broad rewards program. It has begun experimenting with credits on hotel stays, but it should make loyalty a priority, not just a promotion.
Airbnb also plans to launch its own AI agent next year. But travelers using an agent might still want it to search Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking and hotel websites alike, rather than limit itself to one company’s inventory.
Eventually, Airbnb might have to strike deals with agent makers, using its unique homes as leverage to negotiate favorable terms, says Gawrelski. Such deals, along with rewards for loyal guests, could over the long term eat into the company’s roughly 13% take rate, he adds. But if they bring in enough additional bookings, the trade-off could be worthwhile.
History offers a reason not to panic. The shift from desktop to mobile unsettled investors in Alphabet and Amazon, but both emerged as major beneficiaries. Companies with valuable assets can come out of a platform shift stronger, if they adapt quickly enough.
Airbnb has homes the bots can’t easily replace. Now it needs to give guests a reason to insist on booking them there.
