Saturday, November 22, 2008

A brief postscript to this week's Wisdom of Crowds post


A quick followup to Barack Obama and the Wisdom of Crowds:

Using Intrade's US Election 2008 Tool and Yahoo! Finance Interactive Charts, we can track the daily prices for Obama versus McCain as well as the daily closing prices of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA).

Date   Intrade Futures   DJIA
09/21 50.8 to 48.0 Obama 11388 Sunday
09/22 52.0 to 46.8 Obama 11015
09/23 52.7 to 47.2 Obama 10854
09/24 55.3 to 44.5 Obama 10825 Obama rises from 51 to 55, market drops 550
09/25 55.8 to 43.8 Obama 11022
09/26 56.3 to 43.6 Obama 11143
09/27 56.4 to 42.6 Obama 11143 Saturday
09/28 57.0 to 41.7 Obama 11143 Sunday
09/29 61.0 to 38.1 Obama 10365 Obama rises from 55 to 61, market drops 450
...
10/10 79.0 to 21.5 Obama 8451 Obama rises from 61 to 79, market drops 850

Some commenters posit that the market drop caused Obama's chances to increase. I assert that the opposite actually happened.

Consider that on June 5, the market stood at 12,604. Despite a 1,200 point drop over the summer, Obama and McCain's election chances were virtually even into late September. But once Obama began to truly separate himself from McCain, the market responded with a precipitous drop.

Related: Barack Obama and the Wisdom of Crowds.

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