While global markets had factored in the likelihood of a French Presidential win for left of centre candidate Francois Hollande, it was the Greek election that caused panic about the future of the eurozone.
After the centre right New Democracy leader Antonis Samaras announced that he was unable to form a coalition government, after attracting the largest share of the vote at 18.86 per cent, the mandate to form a government then passed to the left leaning coalition Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras.
This party received 16.78 per cent of the vote, and now has three days to attempt to form a coalition with other parties.
Markets believe this could lead to Greece withdrawing from the euro. With Germany wanting to continue European austerity measures, there is clear resistance to this approach among many European nations, as evidenced by the French and Greek election results.
As a result, the euro was trading at 1.23 against the pound, and 1.3024 against the dollar. These were the weakest figures since January.
The Standard & Poor’s GSCI index had its worst run since August losing as much as 1.3 per cent to 645.29.
WTI Crude oil was at its lowest since 20 December falling 3.2 per cent to $95.34. Brent Crude meanwhile was down to $113 this morning.
The LME was closed yesterday for the bank holiday, but it fell 0.7 per cent on Friday only to pick up to 0.2 per cent to $8,188 at 7am this morning.
Aluminium was up a touch to $2,075, while lead increased by 0.38 per cent to $2,108.
