Open Thread

For general discussion and debate. Possible talking point: The Obama Bear Market.

The voters may be full of hope about the looming Obama Presidency, but so far investors aren't. No President-elect in the postwar era has been greeted with a more audible hiss from Wall Street. The Dow has lost 1,342 points, or about 14%, since the election, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq hitting similar skids. The Dow fell another 4.7% yesterday.

Maybe worse, the post-election three-day decline of 7.1 percent last week was the worst in the Modern Era:

Since 1900, the worst such three-day performance for the Dow was a 6.0 percent fall after Harry S Truman was reelected in 1948. Such titanic declines are atypical as markets normally rally immediately after presidential elections with the average since the beginning of the 20th century being a 0.7 percent rise.

Is Obama and his socialist economic policies to blame for this post-election collapse, or is this just a continuation of a bear market that began in October 2007? Or both?