IS OBAMA'S LOSS WALL STREET'S GAIN?

Jim Cramer seems to think so. Cramer plotted the Obama disapproval numbers against the S&P 500 performance index and found a nearly identical trend line since the March low. I tend to agree with Cramer, though for somewhat different reasons, as I posted as far back as last March (here and here).

Here's a chart similar to that Cramer showed. I've plotted President Obama's approval index as taken from the Rasmussen daily tracking poll against the Dow Jones Industrial Average (year-to-date) taken from the CNN Money web site. The Obama approval index is in black; the DJIA is in lighter blue behind it.

Until early March, the two indices both declined, almost in lockstep; then in March they began to diverge, and as shown, the DJIA is increasing at about the same rate that Obama's approval is declining.


And, yes, I know correlation does not imply causation.

My speculation is that it took roughly the first two months of the Obama administration for Wall Street to realize that the administration is simply incompetent and decide to "go it alone." In that sense, Wall Street was about two months behind the American people, who came to the same realization much earlier.

The tea parties and now the health care townhall debates are simply the physical manifestations of that realization.

Hat tip to Instapundit.