The Hungarian currency appreciated 2.4% to 365.69 per euro at 9.06 am in Budapest, its strongest level since 2022.
The country’s dollar bonds were the best performers across emerging markets while the BUX stock index jumped by as much as 3.3% in early trading.
The results are an overwhelming rebuke to Orban’s self-styled “illiberal democracy,” which has been backed by both US President Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin. With almost 99% of the votes counted, Tisza was set to win a commanding two-thirds majority that will allow it to quickly pass legislation unopposed and dismantle the system Orban built over 16 years in power.
Magyar’s ascent to power is seen helping unblock access to EU financing, which has been partly frozen by Brussels due to rule-of-law breaches by Orban’s administration. Tisza has also vowed to take steps toward joining the euro area, which would reduce Hungary’s borrowing costs, currently among the highest in the EU with the yield on 10-year local-currency government bonds averaging about 7% over the past 12 months.
In the run-up to the elections, bets for an opposition victory as well as a fragile truce in the Iran war drove Budapest stocks to their biggest weekly gain since 2020. A JPMorgan Chase & Co. index showed the risk premium on Hungary’s dollar bonds narrowed 17 basis points to 119 last week.
Wagers on a seismic shift in Hungarian politics had already helped the forint surge 7% against the euro and 21% against the dollar last year — the most among major emerging-market peers behind the seldom-traded Russian ruble. Budapest’s BUX equities index closed just below a record high on Friday.
With inputs from Bloomberg
