Writing in the National Review Online, Lawrence Kudlow jokingly seriously asserts:

This [Kerry & Edwards’ performances in Iowa] is why the stock market opened the day after Iowa on a less-than-gleeful note, despite booming earnings reports left and right. The market knows what the new Democratic front runners seem not to know…

Granted, we’re not professional investors like Larry, but we have to wonder. Prior to the Iowa caucuses, Howard Dean was thought to be the front runner. He has advocated repealing all of Bush’s tax cuts. Kerry and Edwards, who favor the repeal of only some, defy expectations and finish first and second. The market’s reaction to better than expected news (from a tax policy point of view) is a decline? Did investors not know about the Iowa caucuses until they actually took place? That seems somewhat unlikely.