Carl Icahn, the billionaire investor and Trump supporter, watched the tumult from the Republican's victory party in New York. It was "insanity," Icahn said in an interview with CNBC Wednesday morning.

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"I went home and bought some stocks," Icahn said. "I usually don't trade so I feel good about that because I really don't think having Donald Trump in the White House ... is going to be so terrible."

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Actually, he bought a lot of stock, about $1 billion worth, Icahn told Bloomberg TV. “I would have tried to put a lot more to work, but I couldn’t put more than about $1 billion to work, and then the market got away. But I’m still happy about it,’’ Icahn said.

Icahn's bet was prescient. The Dow, an index of 30-blue chip stocks, was up nearly 1 percent in the early afternoon, while the Standard & Poors 500 and tech-heavy Nasdaq were up about .5 percent.

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"I would have expected a much more significant decline this morning," said Phil Orlando, chief equity market strategist for Federated Investors. "Maybe everyone is starting to get comfortable with the idea that this isn’t the end of the world as we know it, and there is a silver lining here."

Investors had expected Hillary Clinton to prevail and initially panicked as Trump took the lead, market analysts said. But over the next few hours, while U.S. markets remained closed, traders had time to adjust their forecasts and digest the news, they said.

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"The initial reaction was because it was unexpected. Markets react to surprises," said Peter Andersen, chief investment officer of Boston-based Fiduciary Trust. "It responded in a Brexit-like fashion but in a much more compressed fashion."

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Despite the initial jump in stocks, analysts said, U.S. stocks are likely to enter a period of volatility over the next few weeks. There will be a lot of speculation around who will fill high-level positions within a Trump presidency, and what the president-elect might do, which could rattle stocks until the dust settles, they said.