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No shorts on Obama’s futures nos.

By
Jonathon Trugman
Published Oct. 7, 2012, 4:00 a.m. ET

Wall Street doesn’t care what the presidential polls are saying. As usual, it goes where money does the talking.

That’s the domain of Intrade, a politically powerful “Prediction Market” that trades political futures and other market-event outcomes — real money, not hackneyed spin or tree-hugging sentiment.

And, to be sure, the market pros saw this as a real contest, with President Obama leading by a slight majority just after Labor Day. In fact, on Intrade during June, July, August and early September, the president held the edge of a well-liked incumbent, consistently in the low-to-mid-50s percentages. (A sure winner is 100 percent.)

But that all changed when Fed chief Ben Bernanke announced Sept. 13 that he was starting up the printing presses again. That day, Obama’s odds closed at 63.2 percent on an explosion in volume: More than 3 million contracts changed hands; equities soared as well.

In fact, Intrade’s election charts on an Obama re-election correlate quite well with the performance of the S&P 500.

Even after the president’s universally panned debate performance — which caused a sell-off from his 52-week high of 76 percent, he still led Mitt Romney 68 percent to 32 percent. Obama’s numbers rebounded to about 70 percent on Friday with the unemployment rate dropping to 7.8 percent.

But with the US in the economic doldrums, how could equities move in concert with the president’s stock?

It’s not a coincidence. Who can forget James Carville’s famous line when pestered by a reporter: “People vote Dow Jones, not Paula Jones.”

It’s clear the market enjoys zero percent interest rates and quantitative-easing liquidity, and if the president wins, the punch bowl is refilled. (A vote for the president now is a vote for Bernanke, too. Romney has said he would replace Ben when the Fed chief’s term was up.)

One thing is for sure, and no debate needed on this: The Fed’s timing was manipulative and undemocratic; the InTrade numbers don’t lie.

The Fed has influenced the election — which is un–American.