iPredict last week
From iPredict’s weekly newsletter.
A lot of events in the fourth to last week of the campaign. The campaign launches themselves seem to have made little impact on share prices, but the One News Colmar Brunton poll giving National an 18% lead pushed National up from 70c to 73c. National then dropped back on Monday to as low as 68c.
On Tuesday as bad news from the first two days dominated, National dropped to 65c. But then as the debate got underway at 7 pm, National went up 5c during the 90 minute debate and a further 2c later that night to 72c. Labour went into the debate at 35c and at one stage that night had dropped to 25c.
Wednesday saw National launch its NZ Super Fund policy and this was seen as a vote winner pushing them up to 76c by midday, where they have stayed since. So National and Labour are both at where they were a week ago before the Roy Morgan poll pushed them both close together by 5c each.
Majority.Nat has not recovered so well though. Before the Roy Morgan poll it was at 35c and dropped to 17c. Over the week it recovered to reach 28c but still some way off its start.
MP.Peters had an unusual week Over the weekend it went from 36c to 45c, perhaps reflecting a strong campaign launch. But then on Wednesday it collapsed to 35c, recovering to 40c Thursday. There does not appear to be a strong reason for such volatility.
Benson.Pope saw a lot of money lost as it rose early in the week from 24c to 45c as stories emerged he was still doo knocking. But he bluffed well, and his announcement on Monday that he was not standing sent the stock crashing to zero.
Finally we have a new feature – my weekly recommended buy or sell (note I have stock in Obama). My recommended buy would be US.Obama at anything below 90c. The reason for this is not his 7% lead on average in the national polls, but his lead in the state polls. They show him to already have a majority in the electoral college, even if you do not allocate out any of the close races. He has the states, the money, the volunteers and the enthusiasm and he will be the first African-American President of the United States unless he is hit by the mother of all scandals.