On June 18, Chilean billionaire Sebastian Pinera became convinced he'd win the presidency of the South American country.

The Santiago-based polling firm Centro de Estudios Publicos found that support for the center-left governing coalition had split between two presidential candidates, robbing it of the votes needed to beat Pinera.

The new leader, who was elected Sunday, amassed his fortune by setting up Chile's first credit card network and turning around a struggling airline. He decided to invest more in his own election in June, says Jose Miguel Izquierdo, Pinera's political operations director, as reported in the March issue of Bloomberg Markets magazine.

"That's when we said, 'We can win this,'" Izquierdo says, banging his fist on his desk at campaign headquarters in a Santiago mansion. "It's money on the table. When he feels like he's going to lose, he stops investing."

By Sunday's runoff election, Pinera had spent at least $13.6 million on the campaign and the bet paid off.

Pinera, 60, won the contest against one-time President Eduardo Frei, a Christian Democrat, unseating the center-left coalition that had governed Chile since dictator Augusto Pinochet was forced from power in 1990.

The victory marks a political shift in Chile, a nation of 17 million people that straddles 4,100 kilometers (2,547 miles) of the Andes Mountains from its northern border with Peru to the Cape Horn.

Eoin Treacy's view The economic reforms introduced by Pinochet's regime have been case studies at schools of economics for a number of years because they effectively illustrate how a country can shape its economic future by adopting sound fiscal governance. The return of a right leaning government after 20 years suggests that some of the wounds incurred by the previous regime are healing. Provided the incumbent holds to democratic principals and his party remain contrite about the mistakes of the past, we can continue to give the benefit of the doubt to improving standards of corporate, economic and civil governance.

Over the last decade the country has been a prime beneficiary of the bull market in commodities, particularly copper and remains well placed to continue to prosper. Copper bottomed in December 2008 and continues to trend consistently, albeit steeply, higher. Prices appear to be forming another small consolidation, below the psychological 350¢ level but remain in the well defined step sequence uptrend. A sustained move below 330¢ would be required to question the consistency of the move, while a decline below 300¢ would break the 13-month progression of higher lows, pull back into the previous range and likely take out the ascending 200-day moving average; suggesting a medium-term change in the dominance of demand was underway.

The IPSA Index of the country's 40 most liquid shares peaked in early 2007 near 3500, well ahead of global stock and other commodity related markets. It bottomed following a downward acceleration in October 2008 and subsequently was one of the first indices to break upwards from its base. It quickly rallied to 3250 before advancing to test the 2007 high at a more moderate rate. The Index broke upwards to new high ground at the end of last year and this is the eighth consecutive week to the upside. It is now somewhat overbought in the short-term, but a downward dynamic would be required to check the advance beyond a brief pause while a sustained move below 3250 would be needed to begin to question the bull market hypothesis.

The US Dollar topped out against the Chilean Peso in 2002 following more than two decades of persistent strengthening. It trended consistently lower from early 2003 to March 2008 but rallied sharply during the credit crisis and hit a medium-term high in November 2008. The Dollar has been trending consistently lower against the Peso since November 2008 with a sequence of lower rally highs. It is currently steadying in the region of CLP500 but would need to sustain a move above CLP510 to indicate anything other than a distribution within the overall downtrend. A move above CLP550 would be needed to challenge medium-term US Dollar supply dominance.