Traders and investors initially bought into 'military intelligence' and assumed that the war would be short and sweet allowing a juicy profit to flow from a quick regime change in Iraq.

It's become obvious that this isn't going to be the case. In spite of a propaganda and disinformation campaign of biblical proportions, nine days after they set out US and British forces are still sixty miles from Baghdad. Thousands of reinforcements are being brought in and Bush has admitted that it could now take months to accomplish.

The markets will not like this. Watch for one of the largest single day drops in history, come monday morning.

Since he posted over on DC IMC and I just came from there, I'll post what I noted there over here too -- just as an FYI.



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http://dc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=61092&group=webcast

not exactly, but generally speaking........

by ziggy 9:40pm Sun Mar 30 '03





The markets are going to keep going down for the time being, as a general rule, in large part because of the fact you note: people were rather clueless about the degree to which reality was supplanted by raw propaganda. Market people tend to be really blind when it comes to the near-term political outlook.

But there's no indication that the market players are getting ready to dump on mass Monday. All you have to do is look at the S&P 500 futures to see this

http://www.cme.com/httpwrapper.cfm?wrap=/wrappedpages/delayed_intraday_quotes/10min_globex_flash_quote/gflash.html

There's no major backing up of the selling pressure. It could build after the opening if there is additional news that makes people realize the extent of the lies. But as it stands, tomorrow looks like a general drift down not avalanche, at least given current information at the time of this post.



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And if you've never read that futures output page, he's a translation tip: When it notes -600 for SP500, that indicates on opening quote down by six points -- nothing titanic, just conventional downward pressure.

Also, it's important to note that the futures market really only provides an indication for the conditions at the market opening. It could very well happen that traders and other wall street types will get depressed and down about the war prospects as Monday moves forward. The final close could be much more down than six points, of course. But what I wanted to show with the futures quote above is that there's no particular panic right now, and that suggests increased odds for orderly sales and a drift down, not what "in the know" is claiming is certain, that "indications" exist for his claim.