To The Victor The Spoils

The President better enjoy it while it lasts, for I may have heard a glimpse of his future last night on the radio while driving home from visiting friends and their new baby. I was listening to WBZ in Boston just as PA and WI went for Obama and it started looking like things were going his way. WBZ's election coverage was decidedly left-leaning and things were starting to get giddy with anticipation. A very articulate woman was part of the analysis team, no idea who she was, but she was openly pro-Obama. What she said was illuminating (and I'm paraphrasing):

"It looks like I'm going to get what I want. I looks like Obama is going to win, yes, but now we're left with What Now? We still don't know what happened in Libya. We still don't know what his plan is to get the economy going. We still don't know what's happening with the fiscal cliff. We have all these questions left unanswered."

This was one of his own speaking. Imagine the other side of the aisle. To the victor the spoils. Futures have sold off hard in the overnight session. The dollar is up sharply.  CNBC chimed in: "Big challenges ahead." But Yahoo News said it best: "Obama Lease Renewed Despite Tough Economic Times." It's a LEASE.

I think when they review the game tapes from this election, it will show how shortsighted it was of Romney to openly admit that he would sack Bernanke. In response, Ben merely turned on the money spigot and floated Obama safely off the rocks. And that was that. Sadly, that's a private equity guy for you. They just don't understand that their business is not about brains. It's about Easy Money.

That woman on the radio last night sounded like someone sitting at the kitchen table looking at all the bills from Christmas that must be paid. There could be millions more like her.

It is too early to know how to trade this market today. Until it breaks above 1434.27 or below 1408.13, I'm reserving my judgement. I'd rather see higher numbers only because I think that's the path of least resistance because of too many bears last week.

But maybe the market is about to show us that there were too many bulls who got just what they wanted . . . and suddenly don't want it as much.