Stock market predicts Clinton as the winner

Sue Chang of MarketWatch says that the stock market has already predicted that Hillary Clinton will win in November -- and probably will win big.

Even though Wall Street traditionally supports the Republican nominee, investors this year seem to be betting against this year's nominee.   "The market appears to have decided not only that [Hillary] Clinton will win, but that it won’t be close,” David Woo, a strategist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, said . . . .  "Investors like landslide victories.”

The 90 trading-day countdown to election day is the key.  Woo noted that the Standard and Poor 500 has risen more than 4% since July 5, which marks the beginning of the 90-trading-day countdown to the election on Nov. 8.

Sam Stovall, U.S. equity strategist at S&P Global Market Intelligence, noted that the S&P 500  has a fairly good record of predicting election results.  "Since 1944, the incumbent person or party was reelected 82 % of the time when the S&P 500 rose between July 31 and Oct. 31. . . .   Whenever the S&P 500 fell in price during these three months, however, it signaled the replacement of the incumbent 86% of the time.”

This seems corroborated by PredictWise, the market based predictor, which gives Clinton a 75% chance of winning the presidency.   Another predictor, based on economic and political structures, rather than the candidates, is Moody's Analytics.  It also predicts a Clinton win, two important predictive factors being low gas prices and the incumbent's (Obama's) popularity.

Yes, but let's don't get over-confident.   There's an outlier CNN poll out yesterday with Trump leading by 2% (obviously within margin of error,and also probably a skewed sample).

Ralph

PS:   Yes, I too thought that "July 5" must be a misprint, since July to November is four months.  But the 90 days is "market days," which means weekdays, without weekends or holidays.   So it is correct.   I counted.

PPS:   Don't worry about Trump as a loser.   They're already into Plan B, according to "inside sources."   Look for the startup "Trump News Media" to rival, and perhaps take down, Fox News.    Trump's already got Roger Ailes (TV) and Stephen Bannon (internet) on his team, each an expert in running a right-wing media behemoth.  One scenario making the rounds is that Trump continues his attempt to poison the presidency of Hillary Clinton through a continuous stream of internet and tv Trumpism.   He's already got an audience of millions, plus the email addresses of all those who have gotten into his rallies.