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tocks and currency have rallied this week as the financial market has been buoyed by expectations that presidential candidate Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo will win today'€™s election and push for reforms that are crucial to boost Southeast Asia'€™s biggest economy.

An anomaly, however, was seen in shares of Bakrie Group-affiliated companies, as they faced selling pressures on Tuesday amid a strong buying mood in the market.

Aburizal Bakrie is the chairman of the Golkar Party, which supported Jokowi'€™s rival candidate, dismissed Army general Prabowo Subianto from the Gerindra Party.

Bakrie'€™s coal mining business, Bumi Resources, lost 7.5 percent to close trading at Rp 161 a share, and was among the top three laggards in the overall stock market.

Bumi'€™s non-coal subsidiary Bumi Resources Minerals concluded the day down almost 4.5 percent to Rp 256 a share at the closing bell.

Universal Broker research head Satrio Utomo said that political sentiment indeed played a big part in dragging down the shares of the Bakrie empire.

Satrio said it was undeniable that the market favored Jokowi to win the race, and said he was also optimistic that the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) candidate would win.

'€œIt is predicted that if Jokowi wins, the rupiah will strengthen, with foreign investments flowing in. It [would have] negative affects on commodities shares, which perform best when the rupiah weakens against the US dollar. Drops in Bakrie'€™s shares are deeply impacted by the dwindling performance of the mining index during the day,'€
he said.

Mining, agriculture and trade were the only indices that ended in the red in Tuesday'€™s trading.

Desmon Silitonga, an analyst at Millenium Danatama, said that setting aside political sentiment, Bakrie shares had been underperforming in recent trading due to what is considered to be poor company management and a lack of transparency, as well as delays in submitting financial reports.

Shares in the tycoon'€™s media empire, Visi Media Asia (VIVA), experienced a slight drop by 0.37 percent to close at Rp 268 per share on Tuesday, while shares of its subsidiary Intermedia Capital '€” operator of the free-to-air television channel ANTV '€” slipped by 0.53 percent to Rp 1,880 a piece.

Bakrie has 10 companies listed on the bourse. The group'€™s other listed firms remained idle nearing the bourse'€™s lowest price limit of Rp 50 per share on Tuesday.

Almost Rp 1.6 trillion worth of foreign funds bought Indonesian stocks on Tuesday, pushing up the benchmark Jakarta Composite Index (JCI) by 0.7 percent to 5,024, after already surging 1.7 percent on Monday.

The rupiah also advanced 0.7 percent to 11,625 per US dollar, after rallying 1.5 percent on Monday, according to prices from local banks as compiled by Bloomberg.

Investors'€™ optimism about one particular presidential candidate'€™s possible win drove the JCI to rally for two days straight this week, said Bank Negara Indonesia (BNI) Securities research head Norico Gaman.

'€œInvestors believe that candidate number 2 [Jokowi] has a bigger chance of winning the election and that he represents a better new administration,'€ he said.

Should Jokowi win, the JCI is estimated to continue to rally for the rest of the week and may even reach 5,100, according to Norico.

'€œHowever, if candidate number 1 [Prabowo] turns out to be victorious, we may see capital outflows and a correction in the JCI to around 4,500 in the near future,'€ he added.

Investors are expecting the so-called Jokowi '€œrebound'€ to bring him to victory after the most recent poll by the Indonesian Survey Institute (LSI) on Monday showed the margin had widened to 3.6 percentage points, from 0.5 percentage points in its survey at the end of last month.

Reports that Jokowi was leading in exit polls of voters outside of Indonesia over the weekend helped drive stock market gains, according to Andy Ferdinand, head of research at PT Batavia Prosperindo Sekuritas in Jakarta.

'€œThe market was driven by the latest survey and the exit polls from the overseas vote,'€ said Amica Darmawan, a fund manager at PT First State Investments Indonesia, as quoted by Bloomberg. '€œLooking forward, I think investors will have to go back to the economic fundamentals and it'€™s hard to justify the gain for now.'€

First Asia Capital analyst David Sutyanto also acknowledged that Tuesday'€™s rally was motivated by positive sentiment that leaned toward Jokowi.

'€œWhat happened today [Tuesday] was purely triggered by political sentiment, and shares of big cap firms will still benefit from the sentiment for the rest of the week,'€ he said, predicting that the political sentiment would subside next week with the JCI standing below 5,000, regardless of who won the election.