The euro pulled away from highs hit early in the Asian session on Monday as investors took profits from its gains after centrist: Emmanuel Macron’s victory over the far-right Marine Le Pen in France’s presidential election. This particular event brought relief to investors who had feared another popular disturbance after Britain’s vote to exit the European Union and Donald Trump’s election to president last year.
The euro had been on a rising streak in the days ahead of the election, as investors began to position for a Macron victory. In relevance to this, Macron’s margin of victory appeared to be even larger than expected. With most votes counted, he had garnered around 65.5% against Le Pen’s 34.5%.
In accordance to this, chief currency strategist for Mizuho Securities: Masafumi Yamamoto said that: “the market already priced in the victory of Macron. We saw some additional rise of the euro this morning, but considering the difficulty for Macron’s party to get a majority in the national assembly election, he may not bring higher growth.” He commented as United States Treasury yields rose.
With his insight at the position in the euro, he also added, “the market has squared its short positions, but there are no fresh reasons to take long positions, as there will likely be no new positive developments, and limited scope for upside for the euro.”
The euro rose as high as %1.1024 in early Asian trading, its highest since November 9th. It aso jumped to a one-year high against its Japanese counterpart which rocketed as high as 124.58 yen, as well as a five-month long high of 1.08865 Swiss franc. However, it slipped 0.2% to $1.0975 against dollar, and to 123.76 yen, which is also down of 0.2%.