Friday, November 21, 2008

Obama’s Good News: Geithner for Treasury

Yesterday, the S&P 500 dropped to 752, below its last bear market low of 769 hit in October 2002. The last time the S&P was this low was 1997, when the index was on the upswing. Overall, My FOX INDEX, which measures the distance to a healthy market (12,000 Dow, 1,300 S&P, 2,500 NASDAQ), hit a new bottom of -6,179 (index is 3 months old—we run the FOX INDEX whenever it hits new lows), 92% of the way from healthy to the October 2002 bottom. Yesterday was indeed a Black Thursday [see chart].

Today, the market moved up sharply on the leaked news Tim Geithner, the head of Federal Reserve Bank of New York, will be named treasury secretary Monday. Obama has made the market nervous—traders worry about where he will take the economy. Geithner represents competence, he’s a known quantity, he’s been active working with Paulson on Paulson’s rescue plans, and Geithner’s appointment signals Obama wants a calm, steady hand guiding our economic future. Good news for the market and for America.

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