The headline in Bloomberg home page said it all:
• Obama Stock Rally Persists on $3.5 Trillion in Money Market Fund Hoarding
As we have noted tine and again, this was neither an Obama sell off nor an Obama rally. Who the president is at any given moment is mostly irrelevant to the machinations of the markets. The sell off that began in late 2007 and bottomed in March 2009 was the culmination of years, perhaps decades of decisions made by traders, bankers, bureaucrats, pols, and others.
The article goes on to discuss another peeve of ours, the “Wall of cash” on the sidelines. By coincidence, this morning the WSJ also mentions the “wall of money.”
On Google, “wall of money” generates 13,200,000 responses; “wall of cash” finds 1,840,000 hits. “Cash on the sidelines” yields 459,000.
I’ll see if I can dig up a chart of Money market funds vs SPX later.
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Previously:
Iowa and Prediction Markets (January 24th, 2004)
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2004/01/iowa-and-prediction-markets/
Confusing Cause & Effect: Elections and Markets (January 9th, 2008)
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2008/01/confusing-cause-effect-elections-and-markets/
Pricing in a Bush Presidency (July 8th, 2008)
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2008/07/pricing-in-a-bush-presidency/
Has the Market Fully Discounted the Bush Presidency ? (November 4th, 2008)
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2008/11/has-the-market-fully-discounted-the-bush-presidency/
Markets Are Rorschach Inkbot Tests (March 2, 2009)
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/03/markets-are-rorschach-inkbot-tests/
Was the ‘00-03 Crash Bush’s Fault? ‘09 Obama’s? (March 5th, 2009)
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/03/2000-crash-bush-09-obama/
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