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"I
saw that market going down like insanity, and I personally don't
believe that Trump is bad for the market necessarily, so I left
and went home and I bought a lot of stock in the overnight
market," Icahn said.
Icahn told Bloomberg TV on Wednesday that his purchase of U.S.
stocks after leaving Trump's victory party in the early morning
hours amounted to a roughly $1 billion bet. Icahn also told
Bloomberg he had removed some hedging trades last night.
Icahn said he did not buy more shares of health supplements
maker Herbalife Ltd overnight, but only said he had bought "the
S&P." Icahn owned a roughly 24 percent stake in Herbalife as of
Tuesday, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission
filing.
Through the night, financial markets reacted violently to the
election results and as Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton's
path to victory narrowed.
The S&P futures slid 5 percent and hit a limit down, meaning the
contract could not trade lower, only sideways or up. Dow
Industrials futures briefly fell 800 points.
U.S. stocks rebounded dramatically, however, with the benchmark
S&P 500 U.S. stock index last up 0.67 percent.
Icahn, who supported Republican Trump during his campaign, said
Trump's victory would bring positive change to the U.S. economy.
"You know I’ve been very hedged,” Icahn said. "Now is the first
time that I think that there is a chance for our economy to come
out of this."
He said regulatory agencies had "run amok" in many cases, but
that some regulation of Wall Street was still needed and that he
would not favor a rollback of Dodd-Frank, the 2010 financial
regulatory law passed in the aftermath of the 2007-2009
financial crisis.
(Reporting by Sam Forgione; Editing by Chris Reese, Andrew Hay
and David Gregorio)
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