On slow summer afternoons in the DealBreaker bunker we like to play a game we call "Market Movers." The point is to come up with a one or two sentence explanation for broad market movements. Whoever comes up with the most ridiculous yet vaguely plausible explanation wins.
Yesterday's winning entry in Market Movers was a bit lengthy but so ridiculous that it ended the game entirely.
One of the things we've learned during the Democratic primary battle is that Hillary's victories are bullish for stocks and Obama's wins are bearish.
The clearest example was Hillary's massive West Virginia victory. Stocks opened strong the following day. But after Obama's big North Carolina win, a night he nearly carried Indiana, stocks opened way down.
Even though Hillary clocked Obama in Kentucky, since Obama took Oregon convincingly, he really carried last night's elections and now stands on the verge of gaining the Democratic nomination. Not surprisingly, stocks opened down 80 points this morning.
So who was the genius who came up with the nonsense that the market moves because of the Oregon primary while discounting the Kentucky primary? Amazingly, it was Larry Kudlow, who doesn't even work at DealBreaker. We were going to send him an email congratulating him on the win until we realized that he wasn't playing Market Movers at all. He was being absolutely sincere.
Stocks Don't Like Obama [NRO]
Posted by guest, May 22, 2008 10:35AM
JC - do I hear sarcasm in the tone of your writing? You can't possibly disagree with Kudlow. I don't think his explanation should have even been considered in your game because it doesn't fit your criteria of being "ridiculous" whatsoever, it was just plain fact.