Euro Jumps To 6-Week High After Lunatic Loses Key Debate

We start Tuesday in Europe in the aftermath of the closely watched presidential debate at which Marine Le Pen had the following message for Donald Trump: “I see your travel ban and border wall, and I’ll raise you one ban on legal immigration.”

“I want to stop immigration both legal and illegal and I’m proud of my plan,” she mused, before saying the following in her closing statement: “Savage globalization has been a nightmare for voters.”

BOOM. Le Pen: “hold my beer”….
Marine Le Pen vows to stop “illegal or legal” immigration to France

— Walter White (@heisenbergrpt) March 20, 2017

Thankfully, the win went to Emmanuel Macron who, according to a pair of snap polls, navigated the debate deftly.

“Macron managed quite well,” said Bruno Cautres, a political scientist at SciencesPo in Paris. “The challenge for him was to show that he wasn’t just the new and inexperienced one, to show he has the depth and the skills.”

Here’s more from Bloomberg:

Emmanuel Macron was the most convincing of the five candidates in Monday’s five-way debate between presidential candidates, according to 24% of those questioned in an Opinionway poll for Le Point.

Francois Fillon and Marine Le Pen both scored 19% in the poll

Jean-Luc Melenchon 15%, Benoit Hamon 10%

1,037 viewers were questioned after the debate; margin of error between 1.5 and 3 points.

This was good news for the single currency, which rose against all 10 of its major peers to a six week high. Here’s some perspective:

EURUSD

EURUSD2

EURUSD#

Meanwhile, it was the same old story for OATs: sparkle and fade. “French bonds opened higher after the debate, with 10y yields dropping as much as 4bps,” Bloomberg wrote this morning, adding that “the move was quickly faded, as has been repeatedly observed in similar bouts of optimism around the French election.”