What a day!

Yesterday was a very strange day. The market was up about 1.3% an hour after the opening with gainers outpacing losers by roughly 2 to 1. It stayed that way for hours. It appeared to me that the market was expecting Bush to win. Tradesports and the Iowa futures market, where people bet money on the outcome, gave Bush about a 65% chance of winning as I recall.

About an hour before the close, the stock market began to break down on rumors that Kerry was getting stronger voter support than expected. I went on to the Internet to find out what the rumors were. Newspapers were not saying anything but there was a lot of chatter among the bloggers about higher than expected turnout in Democratic wards and exit polling favoring Kerry. Some political analysts and pollsters were predicting a Kerry victory although the Newspaper web sites were not reporting that.

During dinner time, Bill Mohr, the instructor of my Investment Real Estate course called me. He asked me how things were and I told him about the polling place rumors. I checked Tradesports and saw that the betting odds on Bush were about 33%. ( That's 3 to 1 against his winning.) I passed that on to Bill.

By the time that I went to bed, the odds on Bush were 96%. Amazing. Someone who put money on Bush at dinner time could have tripled it in four hours.

(I am only saying that to depict how wildly expectations of the election outcome changed yesterday. I do not advise betting on elections.)