BBC News Channel

All of the major markets in Asia posted heavy falls earlier today, looking like a "sea of red" at one point, says BBC Asia business correspondent Karishma Vaswani.

While most are now closed, markets in India are still trading and are down about 1.2%.

European markets have regained some of their earlier losses, however.

The safe-haven Japanese yen has been rising against the US dollar, while the peso has fallen sharply.

Image source, Coindesk.com

The yen, peso and Swiss franc are not the only currencies to react to Donald Trump's victory.

The price of bitcoin also reacted strongly, with the crypto-currency up 4.07% to $738.33.

Image source, Getty Images

Prime minister Theresa May has congratulated Donald Trump and said Britain and the US "will remain strong and close partners".  

That's her pictured with Hindu priests in Bangalore during the PM's visit to India yesterday, by the way - not Donald Trump...

Business presenter Victoria Fritz tweets:

Dominic O'Connell
Business Presenter, BBC Radio 4 Today programme

Overnight the FTSE 100 futures contract indicated the British market would slump – down 4%, was the call. In the end, the indicators were wrong. Early on the FTSE 100 fell 1.4% but recovered to be down just 0.5% after the first hour’s trading. It was a far cry from the sharp fall the day after the Brexit vote, and mild after the heavy sell-off on Asian markets overnight.

Why are traders so sanguine? Part of the explanation may be an attempt to second-guess what happened after the European referendum. Then, markets recovered all their lost ground in six weeks, and the FTSE 100 eventually went to an all time-high. Once bitten, twice shy.

Investors were also trying to pick winners from the Trump victory. Gold and other commodities were up, while shares that might suffer from trade wars were down.

In the end though, the most likely explanation for the market’s relative calm is confusion. The markets know as little about a Trump presidency as anyone else, and trying to seek a safe haven when no-one quite knows the direction of the world’s largest economy is tricky. Better to sit on your hands, and see what happens.

European markets continue to regain ground after sharp losses at the open. The FTSE 100 in London is now almost flat, while Frankfurt and Paris are both down just 0.8%.

Tom Espiner
Business reporter

Image source, Bloomberg Markets

The Mexican peso has recovered some ground against the US dollar following Donald Trump's US win and is now trading down around 8.5%, according to Bloomberg.

Trump's claim that he would rip up a free trade agreement with Mexico and tax money sent home by migrants to pay for building a wall on the southern US border once elected president have made the peso particularly sensitive to events in the race for the White House.

New York business correspondent Michelle Fleury tweets:

Image source, Getty Images

Societe Generale analysts say the odds of a December US interest rate rise have now "fallen appreciably".

"Next to watch is Trump's selection for key cabinet positions. These choices may be calming or may invoke more concern. A discussion of tax cuts should be a priority. The economic benefits of that may be felt by late 2017, but not earlier. Tax cuts could be a more immediate benefit. 

"Protectionist trade policies are likely to be less substantial but will stretch over a longer period of time, and are obviously bad for emerging markets assets for now - with the notable exception of China onshore assets and Russia."

Image source, Science Photo Library

Donald Trump's victory has created an unexpected boost for Indian pharmaceutical companies.

The Nifty Pharma index was up about 2%, with Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd up 5%.

It was the biggest percentage gainer on the NSE index, and Dr. Reddy's Laboratories Ltd, Aurobindo Pharma Ltd, and Lupin Ltd were among top gainers.

"There is an ongoing investigation against pharma companies for some time now, and she (Clinton) can get a little more aggressive in pushing it ... and this could have been a negative for pharma companies," said Neeraj Dewan, director at Quantum Securities.

It's a good day for the miners on the FTSE 100: Fresnillo has soared almost 15%, Randgold Resources is up 9.5% and Polymetal International is 5.6% higher.

The biggest loser thus far is Experian, down 6.8%

The index has pared earlier losses, though, and is now down just 0.8% at 6,785 points.

Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia's sovereign wealth fund, said Donald Trump's victory would reduce geopolitical confrontations, and boost trade opportunities.

"A less confrontational US foreign policy will unlock major opportunities for joint trade and investment," Mr Dmitriev, head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, said in a statement. 

He said he believed financial markets would recover quickly "just as they did after the Brexit vote." 

Hong Kong has closed 2.1%, or almost 500 points, to end at 22,415 points in the wake of Donald Trump's victory.

The Shanghai and Shenzhen markets both slid about 0.6%.

Connor Campbell of Spreadex comments:

"After a bloodbath of an Asian session, with the Nikkei dropping more than 5%, the European indices are immediately begun to fall this Tuesday. The losses aren’t quite as big as there were in Asia overnight; the FTSE is down just shy of 2%, with the DAX and CAC falling 2.8% and 2.5% respectively. Yet there is surely more to come, especially with a US open that could see well see the Dow Jones post its biggest ever single session slump.

"Gold was understandably the rare-winner this morning, rising 2.5% with plenty more growth likely to come in the next few days and weeks. The dollar, meanwhile, is being hammering by the euro, losing around 1%, but isn’t faring too badly against the Brexit-blighted pound, falling a mere 0.2%."

Guardian City editor Jill Treanor tweets:

The Paris market has opened 2.9% lower after Donald Trump's shock win. 

Germany's Dax is down 2%, along with the Madrid and Milan bourses.