Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg addresses a news conference after launching his presidential bid in Norfolk, Virginia, U.S., November 25, 2019. Joshua Roberts | Reuters

Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is seen as the Democrat most likely to defeat President Donald Trump if nominated, according to an analysis of online betting market data by researchers at Standard Chartered Bank. But Bloomberg, who has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on his nascent bid for the presidency, still only has a 10% chance of winning the primary, according to researchers Steve Englander and Geoff Kendrick, who published their findings in a note on Tuesday. Bloomberg is far from the front of the Democratic primary field in national and state polling, though he has ascended rapidly in recent weeks in large part as a result of his unprecedented spending. Bloomberg has spent more than $200 million on his campaign so far and has said he may spend up to $1 billion to defeat Trump even if he is not the nominee.

The research note from U.K.-based Standard Chartered attempts to explain the strength of the stock market despite polling that shows that Democrats are likely to defeat Trump in November's election. Analysts have speculated that financial markets could plunge if one of the race's progressives is elected, though the major U.S. indexes have continued to set records. Englander, in an interview, said that the standard answer for why the stock market isn't reacting to much of the volatility of the 2020 race is that the election is "too far away and too hard to hedge." "But this is an alternative answer: That the candidates that are most electable are seen as the least unfriendly to asset markets," he said. Englander and Kendrick wrote in the note that it's possible that investors believe it is likely that Trump or a moderate Democrat who is "sympathetic to asset markets" — notably Bloomberg or former Vice President Joe Biden — will ultimately prevail. "Among investors, Bloomberg and Biden are probably viewed as the most asset-market friendly among the Democratic candidates, so their greater implied electability may be why US assets are not showing more stress," the researchers wrote. The researchers suggested it could also be too early for markets to be affected by the 2020 race and that investors may believe that candidates could face trouble enacting their agendas if elected. Englander and Kendrick wrote that the decline in the past few weeks of one of the leading progressives in the race, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., may have neutralized the impact of the other, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., in the eyes of investors. "Sanders' nomination probability has risen in online markets, but Warren's decline may have matched or exceeded his move," they wrote.